Business is about connecting with your customers and the best way to do this is through something they can relate to: a brand name. But in today’s crowded marketplace, it’s not easy to stand out from the crowd. Your brand name should be clearly defined, memorable, and unique — but that’s easier said than done. Here are seven steps you need to take in order to create a great brand name for your business.
Know your target audience
One of the most important things when building a brand is knowing your target audience. It’s hard to know what your audience wants if you don’t know who they are and what they like.
The words you use are important. They can help you evoke emotions and move your ideal clients to action. If you have done the research, no one knows your client better than you. Your brand name is a chance to show it. Choose a name that fits neatly into your brand strategy. Don’t just create a list of cool-sounding words haphazardly – your entire plan should be cohesive.
Research the competition to get an idea of what’s already out there
Before you get started, you should research the competition. As a minimum, run name search engines and figure out who’s already being mentioned in online sources. There are plenty of free tools like Nameberry to gather this information for you, especially for local markets. When researching your competitors, search their full domain names, not just their company name. This will help you get a feel for what their marketing team is working on – and how you can differentiate yourself from them.
Respect copyright laws. This requires time and research but can avoid copyright infringement lawsuits. You could also register your own brand name’s copyright (internationally) to protect it. Check out Burley Law who specialise in IP law and all things related to get you off to a good start.
Take a global look at it
The name of your brand matters. It carries weight, it carries meaning, and it carries global implications. Whether this is your goal or you simply don’t want to rule out the possibility of tremendous success, it may be time to consider what global implications your choice of name may have. Is it divisive? Is it offensive? Is it too difficult to pronounce in another language? These are all things that you should consider before choosing an appropriate name for your brand.
Test out your business name
If your business name is a made-up word, try saying it a few times out loud to see how it feels. If it doesn’t sound natural, it’s not a good name for your business.
Always remember your brand’s main purpose. What does it represent? Ideally, the name you choose should convey the same positive feeling you want your brand to be associated with, incidentally creating trust and confidence. Moreover, in order to be memorable, make sure the name is easy to pronounce and easy to type into a search engine.
123 reg Go Daddy Net Names
Choosing the right domain name is crucial. Consider how your domain name is viewed by potential customers and try to make it as consistent as possible with your brand. When you choose your domain name, think of the customer perspective. In addition, a domain name search may help you settle on a good domain.
There are lots of domain registrars. You can’t really go much wrong. I always advise my clients to keep the domain name with them rather than letting an agency manage it – after all, it’s a very important part of your brand and you should be in control.
Your brand is an identity that people use to define, speak about, and recommend your company. It’s important to use creativity and resources to name your brand. Your brand’s success is directly proportional to the amount of research, thought, and resources put into its creation.
Everybody has different paths to their chosen career. And everyone will have different experiences with self-development professionally and personally. Education has always been important to me as a designer. From the moment I entered the creative scene in London, to now where I am the creative director of a Sutton Coldfield design studio, keeping myself skilled-up is a key element of my working week.
Graphic design and brand consultancy may be based on talent, but it’s hard to be a good designer without additional skills in software, technology, understanding businesses…
When I was an artworker at a London design agency, every lunchtime I stayed in and basically hacked on a scrap document to learn what could make my typesetting faster. Soon, I was the person that would know a shortcut key if there was one. It helped being recognised as a valuable team member and it felt like the right thing to do. Back then we used Quark, and Adobe was that new thing that made pdfs that would embed fonts, oh wonder! I guess I was lucky to start my career at a time when software started to change the creative industry in a storm.
Two years on, I was studying at Central Saint Martins whilst working freelance. I’d spend most of any spare time in libraries going through books about advertising, graphic design, interior design, typography, colour theories, human behaviour, communications – and how to run a business.
Learning from running our Sutton Coldfield design studio and brand consultancy
As soon as I transitioned to working full time as a designer, it fascinated me how we’d end up with those briefs to design a brand identity. What If there was another way to shape that brand? So off I went again to Brunel University to do a course on brand strategy.
And on it goes – workshops, networking mastermind sessions, online tutorials… all the way to starting our Sutton Coldfield design studio back in 2005. To be fair, Essence is probably not a regular graphic design studio: Steven, the other half, is super tech-focused, our data meister and the man that taught me all about CSS, JS, JSON, HTML, how to troubleshoot, and how to comment on code. And I come from a highly conceptual, ideas-focused advertising background with a passion for typography, print technology, copywriting, and using photography to tell a brand story in different media. We like to call Essence a brand consultancy for those reasons.
Even now, more than 16 years in business here, my motto remains: ‘Every day is a school day’. My biggest ongoing learning challenges are UI / UX, tech, automation, and SEO-related because that’s what my clients need help with beyond solid graphic design and branding. There’s so much out there nowadays, even here on social channels, the learning world is your oyster.
To keep improving your skills has nothing to do with your field of expertise – whether you are a business coach, interior designer, marketing manager of a hotel or restaurant, a shop owner selling products to the trade or consumer – or you are a brand consultant and graphic designer, like myself – it is vital to keep learning.
What running a brand consultancy and Sutton Coldfield design studio taught me is not just about business methodologies, project- and client management, cashflow planning, having pricing structures, sales and marketing plans, a vision for the brand, and a comprehensive service setup… It taught me that everything is in flux and you have to move with it. Industries change. Trends change. You change and your experience can greatly enhance what you sell and how you sell it. Keep looking around and up from your work to see what else is out there. It will be time well-spent.
Ever wondered what the difference is between working with a studio or a consultancy? You may be looking for a local partner to help you with your new website. Or you are a start-up with a vision, but not quite sure how to let the world know about it. Or maybe you are an established business that simply needs to have some new brochures designed. Who do you approach?
There are lots of commonalities and some may say it’s pretty much the same as any full-service design agency, but there are nuances that may be worth considering.
A graphic design studio provides print and design services to clients, such as the creation of brochures, flyers, stationery, signage, etc. A brand consultancy, on the other hand, provides a range of services that are not primarily focused on design and artwork. These services can include brand strategy, naming, packaging, content strategy, and marketing – as well as graphic design.
Brand Consultancy vs Graphic Design Studio
Graphic design studios offer professional and comprehensive design services, such as print design, web design, business branding, logos, and creative development. The clients are the ones who come up with the idea and finalise the creative concepts, while the studio employees craft them into reality.
In general, a graphic design studio will work with a client to produce a design or product, then hand it over to the client to use.
A brand consultancy will help you set up an effective brand strategy. They are focused on broad-based branding with the aim of enhancing the image of your company. This will involve brainstorming the business and identifying branding opportunities. You can’t have a strong and effective brand without a strong strategy that will drive the value proposition of your brand. It will inform every decision that your business (or yourself) will be seen to make.
The consultancy will help in the process of defining the right brand identity concepts and designs, typography and colour schemes, designing packaging, exhibition marketing and developing social media or advertising campaigns for your business.
Of course this is the point when the lines start to get blurry.
Every good brand consultancy will be able to see through your project from conceptions and strategy to the actual production of the outputs, which makes it synonymous with the services from a graphic design studio. Equally, good graphic design studios wil gladly try their best to accommodate any strategic requirements. After all, good designers will love a challenge and they will want to see their clients succeed just as much as brand consultants, so it’s a bit down to semantics and individual expertise.
If you already have a communication strategy, with a comprehensice brand and corporate identity guide, (ideal) customer personas, marketing strategy and basically a brief for a specidic list of items, you may well find a graphic design studio is the right fit for you.
If you are not sure about where your business is in the market, where you want it to go and how you are going to get there, working with a brand consultancy could be a good step to ensure you are confident with the materials you are producing – and with a long-term vision in mind. Because the creation of certain brand touch points (print or online brochures and literature, websites, membership portals, loyalty programmes, interior designs etc) is just one element of the work, special attention is given to the impact any creative outputs have on the brand itself.
It’s a step before the visual drawing board that is often forgotten, yet so important if you want to build good foundations for your business.
So how do you pick?
Choosing between the two boils down to a few key factors. Consultancies have highly skilled graphic designers that can work closely with businesses to provide services that might not be suitable for smaller businesses. Consultancies often specialise in certain industries, offering the added benefit of getting brand advice from a seasoned professional.
Consultancies work with branding specialists to handle some of the more sophisticated tasks such as the creation of logos and brand identities. They will have a team of experts for online, print and social media design projects, brand photography and copywriting – after the strategy is in place. Just like graphic design studios, they have a network of suppliers in the print, adertising and exhibition industry, helping their clients to get the best finishes for their brand literature.
A graphic design studio should also be able to work well with any client to help them get the best out of their print and web design. They may even work with a brand consultant to bridge the strategy gap in their services, which brings me back to the blurry lines.
Ultimately, it’s probably down to personal choice. If you are hunting around your local networks or the search engines, it’s worth looking at both – listings for brand consultancy and graphic design studio – and then let their portfolios, websites and customer service speak for themselves.
The two can differ greatly in scope and experience. Naturally, a graphic design studio will offer graphic design services. A brand consultancy will also serve the needs of clients in other areas.
Therefore, it is essential to ensure that your chosen partner has the right skill set to support your business with the appropriate services, whether you identify it as design or branding. And if there are still any doubts, just get in touch with us and we can chat through your ideas and plans.
Your brand connects with your customers in many different ways. Some call it touch points, but simply-put it’s all the varied ways someone will come across your brand in the mind, online and in print. We are tactile people, and online does lack that dimension. Print, however, opens up a whole Aladin’s cave of possibilities to elevate your brand beyond the purely visual. Let’s give it some texture…
What paper types are there?
Without going into every detail, broadly speaking there are these paper types, defined by the composition of their pulp and additives.
Recycled paper
Coated paper (matte, silk and gloss)
Uncoated paper
Bond paper
Recycled paper
Recycled paper is made from 60% to 100% recycled paper pulp. Paper pulp is mixed with water and blended until it breaks down. The individual fibres are bonded together again to make fresh paper materials. Producing around 100,000 sheets of paper requires around eight trees and 2,000Kwh of energy (which is roughly a carbon footprint of 6,000kg).
Paper can be recycled an average of eight times – pretty good going! Recycled paper is energy-efficient enough to reduce both your resource use and your carbon footprint.
There is a great range of papers out there now that fall into the recycled category and it’s an easy choice for brands focused on sustainability.
Coated papers
Gloss paper
There are two main types of coated paper which are basically opposites. Gloss paper has an incredibly high shine and a smooth, tactile feel. It’s a popular choice for leaflets and flyers because it enhances colours. Because it is used for direct mail, it can have the association with ‘junk mail’ and thus the perception can be that of ‘cheap’ rather than luxury. There’s also the issue of fingerprints on the shiny surface… That’s not to say you can’t create a mix of papers for a coffee table book that uses a particular finish on some sections and the gloss on others to work to their strengths.
Matte paper
Matte coated paper has a muted surface that refracts light subtly and evenly, reducing any glare. It has a soft, textured feel to it and is easy to write on in contrast to gloss coated paper. Matte coated paper is very popular when used to create magazines, books and other larger copy-based print, as it isn’t so reflective. Matte is a great compromise if budget is an issue for your print work – most printers will have a house matte in stock and it works for digital and litho.
Silk paper
Silk coated paper is the basically between gloss and matte coated. With that, it has the smooth feel of glossy paper but it doesn’t have the shine. Silk is produced by binding silk fibres together, which gives it a great feel and has a brilliant ink to paper contrast. If you use it with an LED UV printing process, silk-coated paper gives you all the shine and vibrancy of colours you are used to from gloss, but without the glare. Silk paper has long becoming a favourite stock for premium brands along with matte and uncoated.
Uncoated Stock
Bond paper
Bond paper paper type you will mostly find in office stationery, envelop production and packaging. As it lacks a coating, it has the advantage of easily being used for office printers or being written on by pen.
Not having an extra coat makes it prone to damage by tears, scuffs and stains. But on the upside, it’s versatile and won’t fingerprint.
Uncoated paper
Uncoated paper is similar to Bond paper and does not have a coating to fill in between the fibers. That makes it generally rougher compared to coated paper. Uncoated stock tends to be more porous, which makes it also more absorbent. This means that images printed on uncoated papers will be softer and less crisp, but if it fits with your brand values, that can be just the desired effect to be after. You can get amazing choices for textures and finishes. Something else to note is that you can’t UV varnish uncoated paper as it just ‘seeps in’ and disappears, but there are other ways to create the desired effect – with a clear foil for instance.
Paper samples and where to get them
It’s hard to imagine what a paper will actually feel and look like by its name or on the website of the paper mill alone.
Many printers will offer sample packs with printed options for their collection of papers. If you work with a design or branding agency (such as ours), we can organise samples for you for print brochures or stationery so you can be confident with your choice of papers for your brand.
It’s geeky time again! Let’s talk web tech… If you have a website, you probably know there’s a lot more to the site itself. My clients won’t notice most of these extra things to think about when setting up a site.
And I’ve got a lot of little helpers that make the web process smooth sailing. Here’s a quick roundup of some of my faves.
Some are available as plugins especially for WordPress, which has so many little nifty tools. These here are all available as web services though so use whatever system you’re into.
Adobe Color
Looking for the perfect colour palette for your website? Many designers spend countless hours trying to come up with the right palettes. Fortunately, there’s an excellent tool that can help you — and it’s free. Adobe recently launched a new site called adobe color (http://color.adobe.com) which takes advantage of Adobe Kuler’s (another free tool) colour wheel to provide you with a series of beautiful colour combinations.
You have the choice to use the colour wheel to define complimenting colours with different pre-sets:
Analogous
Monochromatic
Triad
Complementary
Split complementary
Double split complementary
Square
Compount
Shades
Custom
The one I love the most is Extract Theme where you upload a photo or graphic to pick the colours from – again with handy presets. You can opt for the colourful, bright, muted, deep, dark or your own.
Once you have a colour, it’s also really handy to see it in action as a gradient. Again, something you can do with Adobe Color. And if you are catering for higher accessibility, voila! Check out the colour blind simulator.
The human eye can distinguish about 10 million different colors. But we’re not able to spot every nuance out there. That’s where contrast comes in. Contrast is the difference in luminance or color that makes an object distinguishable from another. Contrast is important because it determines whether an object stands out from the background, or if it blends in.
Colorable helps you test different colours ‘on top of each other’, looking how a font colour will appear on different background colours.
XML sitemaps are a good idea no matter what, but they’re particularly important for sites with large numbers of pages. If you’re running a large site, you might have hundreds of thousands of pages, and manually submitting each one by hand to search engines would be a time-consuming and potentially error-prone task. XML sitemaps can simplify the process.
Plugins such as Yoast for WordPress or OSMap for Joomla run websites can be used ‘on site’ as well, but if you don’t want plugins, this site map generator is quick and effective.
A whole other section worth mentioning – Google Search. Here you can use your XML Sitemap. When you submit your site in the console, it will also alert you to any issues with pages, links, breadcrumbs etc. It’s a rabbits hole but in its basic functions it’s very useful for helping with SEO.
Meta tags are invisible text that helps search engines understand what your webpage is about. For example, meta description tags are the short, 150-character snippets that appear next to a search result. These help users decide whether or not to click through to your page. This website shows you how you can edit and experiment with your content and previews how your webpage will look on various social media channels.
Again, plugins such as Yoast for WordPress solve this issue neatly, but some parts are limited to the premium version. Meta tags is free to use.
Let’s Encrypt is a Certificate Authority that provides free TLS certificates to millions of individuals and organizations operating in nearly every country around the world. They’re a nonprofit with a mission to encrypt the entire Internet. They help their users set up HTTPS websites so that everyone can benefit from encryption, from users browsing the web to admins managing servers.
Most good web hosts will integrate let’s encrypt so you shouldn’t have to worry about a thing. Just check that your hosting package comes with a free SSL certificate and that you have the padlock on your url starting with https.
Do you know what will happen to your business if your website is down? Up to 30% of all visitors will abandon your website if they can’t access it. This makes the reliability of your website extremely important to your overall success as an online entrepreneur.
No system is perfect, and websites will go down at some point for some reason or another. What’s important is that you find out and are able to react quickly. We monitor the websites we host for clients for exactly that reason. This site monitor is free for up to 50 sites, making it great for SMEs to ensure their online presence is being watched out for.
There are lots more tools out there, of course. And I already have a list in mind of some services that make SEO and the finer details of your website so much easier.
Let us know if you want to talk more about your website design, development or hosting, we will be happy to help.
Today is international women’s day. It’s a day we always observed and celebrated back in the former East when I was a child. Our pen pals from Russia would send these amazing cards for it, and we would giggle cause they were our age, yet sent them as if we already were ‘women’. I never thought twice about it where the day came from.
For me, it was meant to be a day to remind ourselves that women should be treated equal to men. A day to remember those women who had suffered in history purely due to their gender. And to remind ourselves that females are just as pioneering, scientific, artistic, intellectual and caring as men.
But where did International Women’s Day come from?
A short history of IWD
In 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.
In 1910, at a second International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen, Clara Zetkin (Leader of the ‘Women’s Office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) asked women from all around the world to take the day and press for their demands. She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day – a Women’s Day – to raise awareness of women’s issues. She wanted them to tell their stories, which would help people understand their struggles as women, and what they go through to be able to succeed. She wanted to change the way we viewed women and the way we would treat them as equals to men.
When the day was first proposed, Zetkin said in her proposal that women should “receive an equal hearing in the political, industrial and educational fields. We should unite and not separate”. International women’s day was established to give women the “opportunity to participate equally in all public and political activities, and in all social, industrial and economic enterprises”.
International Women’s Day is about celebrating all women, in whatever country, and giving people a chance to speak out and stand up for equal rights and equal pay, for sexual and reproductive rights and for women’s health.
Why March the 8th?
“International Women’s Day was honoured the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on 19 March 1911. (…) On the eve of World War I campaigning for peace, Russian women observed their first International Women’s Day on February 23, the last Sunday in February. Following discussions, International Women’s Day was agreed to be marked annually on March 8 that translated in the widely adopted Gregorian calendar from February 23 – and this day has remained the global date for International Women’s Day ever since. ” (History of IWD)
In East Germany, we had the 1st of March to celebrate the national army, the 3rd to celebrate my dad’s birthday and the 8th was International Women’s Day. That’s just the way it was. Reading more about the origins of International Women’s Day, I realise there are some quirky correlations with other celebrations.
The Greeks have their Festival for their Goddess Artemis on the 8th of March. Artemis is honoured for protecting animals and crops.
It also marks Welsh Witch Day when women who were of magic walked among ordinary folk being able to do so without finding themselves recognised or prosecuted.
What it means for us
I love the notion that after all these years, and thanks to some great social media campaigns, International Women’s Day is celebrated much more in the media than when I first came to the UK.
Of course, the commercial focus is more on Mother’s Day, but to see and hear so much about the 8th of March as a date to address women’s rights and those amazing female leaders across various sections of politics, science, arts and culture, education and health that continue to make a difference.
Hotel marketing ideas may not be on your mind right now… but with the new timeline to opening up announced, it’s going to be critical in the coming weeks to secure much-needed bookings. The impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) has been devastating for many, but everyone will probably agree that one of the hardest-hit sectors is the hospitality industry. Hotels, restaurants, spas, golf clubs, theatres, concert halls and many other leisure companies have been through crazy times in the past year!
The COVID-19 pandemic is still disrupting travel to destinations all over the world. However, it is crucial that you start planning your luxury hotel and spa recovery strategy now. The travel demand will start to increase eventually, and you don’t want to fall behind your competition when it does.
We are looking at hotel marketing ideas that will help you plan the recovery and reopening of your venue this June.
Here are some top marketing strategy ideas that you need to utilise when preparing your luxury hotel and spa for re-opening.
Revamping your website
Display the current status of your business so there are no surprises for visitors. This information needs to clear and concise and should include at least the following:
Is your business currently open or closed?
Has your cancellation policy changed?
What preventative measures do you take to keep staff and customers safe?
Do you keep certain facilities closed or limited?
Are you following government guidelines? Have you taken all possible measures? This will boost customer’s confidence and trust in your business.
Along with this information, tell your website’s visitors where they can find further updates and who they can contact if they have any questions.
You could simply add a temporary banner on the homepage. Or you can design a specific landing page that visitors see when they come from social media or adverts. There are lots of reasons why your hotel and restaurant marketing ideas needs to include a brilliant website.
Whichever approach you take, a page that clearly communicates your latest news can help a great deal in creating trust.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
FAQs are a simple hotel and restaurant marketing idea. Easy to implement, FAQs ensure anyone visiting your site will find the answers they are looking for. You probably have a set of regular questions that keep cropping up.
FAQs can also include other information about your hotel, spa, amenities. You can mention new products/services, offers/deals, and anything else relevant to your business that people should and need to know.
Social media campaign announcing re-opening
Many people use social media for planning their holidays. With channels like Instagram, you can use your beautiful venue to your advantage. Existing and potential customers will enjoy engaging photography that tells your story. They will also look to your social media for the latest updates on the COVID crisis.
You will want to post a statement about the current status of your venue and your plans for re-opening. Social media is perfect to announce your re-opening strategy. Write the core message in an eye-catching post, and link to the full statement on your site. There, guests can find out exactly how you are planning to re-open and what measures you have taken to keep them safe.
You can also talk about special offers and rates for the re-opening. This can be a time-limited offer or something for only a certain number of customers. People love promotions and discounts, so here is a chance to create some buzz and excitement!
Making loyal customers a priority
Customers who have stayed at your business before will likely book a reservation again during these uncertain times. Reward loyal customers with exclusive and personalised packages.
Don’t forget to let customers know about your loyalty programme. Use social media posts, blog posts, or whatever platform your target audience prefers to use. When thinking about hotel marketing ideas, building customer loyalty is a must. Word of mouth advertising is one of the best forms of advertising. People buy from people – and they are much more likely to act on the advice of colleagues, friends, and family.
Hotel marketing ideas involving local businesses
Many businesses that had events and conferences planned have had to cancel. You could start to offer deals to these businesses and potential clients to re-book these events and conferences at your hotel. Provide these customers with lowered rates, exclusive packages, and other perks to secure reservations.
Working with businesses in your local area really helps with marketing your hotel. Businesses and clients that have a great experience with you will likely use your hotel again and recommend it to other clients.
Managing cancellations
If someone wants to cancel their reservation, then they will. However, offering customers the ability to move their reservation to a different date will help you keep some reservations. Let people know that customers can move their reservations to a different date instead of cancelling.
Don’t forget to let them know who they need to contact to deal with their reservation cancellation or changes.
Promoting your safety measures
One of the most important task for businesses during this pandemic is your venue’s cleanliness and sanitation to ensure people’s safety.
There are many steps which need to be taken in order to implement this properly. Some of which include:
Education employees about preventative measures that will be utilised by the business
Cleaning the building and amenities thoroughly and frequently throughout the day
Reducing the number of workers in the hotel at one time
Redesigning processes to allow for social distancing to take place
Implementation of barriers in areas that could receive higher traffic
Using technology when face-to-face meetings can be avoided
Make sure that customers know you have taken these measures. This is something you should promote heavily. This is not just a hotel marketing idea, it really applies to any business interacting with the public. Talking about measures and precautions you are taking will help customers feel safer, build trust and customer loyalty.
You can even introduce branded safety items. Think masks and hand-gels to offer to customers when they visit your luxury hotel and spa. This will re-inforce that you care about health and safety of your visitors. It can also work as a marketing tool. People may end up continuing to use those products after their stay. Your business’s name and logo will receive more awareness. Branded gifts are always a good method for marketing hotels and increasing the interaction and engagement with your guests.
I hope this list of hotel marketing ideas will be useful for you to plan your roadmap back into ‘normality’. If you need any help with any of it, please get in touch!
A media kit (or press kit) is a package of information relevant for the distribution of information for companies, charities or other organisations. They include facts about the people involved, the product, service or cause, as well as brand information, logos, images and visuals supporting any press releases.
Media kits are a great way for a company to show just how engaged they are with their audiences. Whether you’re a local business, a non-profit or a large corporation, having a media kit will help you stand out from the crowd. So how do you go about creating one? Here are 10 things you should include in yours.
Background
When it comes to building an audience, the media needs to know who you are and what you do. The ‘about us’ section should include all of the basics: who you are, what you do, where you are operating, when things are happening, why you do what you do and how you do it.
Journalists are busy people, so keep the introduction short, to the point and consistent with your brand message.
Bios of your team
Include anyone in your team who is suitable for interviews, expert commentary, and speaking engagements. Make sure you include those members who are being mentioned in any of the press releases. Of course you include their bio in the press release together with the company information. It is however good practice to have them in the media kit as well.
Your products and services factsheet
This can be short bullets outlining your products or services. Think of it as factual descriptions similar to how you would present them on your website or in your brochures. Avoid to make it sound like marketing though. Highlight what makes you stand out from others. It’s also useful to include known Q&As here.
Case Studies
Case studies are a great way to demonstrate the success of your products or services. So without making this into a marketing document, here is a chance to include testimonials and recommendations from suitable sources. Again, be careful to avoid promotional talk and keep it factual and informative with the journalists in mind.
Clients or associates
Obviously ask for permission first, but if they are ok, mention them as it adds credibility to your organisation.
Recent press releases
When selecting press releases for your electronic press kit, it’s best to choose something that has been released within the last six months. Ensure that the heading of your press release is easy to grasp and includes any specific announcements the media may be looking for.
You in the news
Already had some mentions in the media? Here is your chance to shout about it! If you’ve been on camera, show a clip – it will work well to show researchers and producers that you are not a newbie… The media tends to have a knock-on effect so showing where you’ve been featured can be really useful.
Avoid any copyright issues by including the name of the outlet with a link to the article or clip. You are not allowed to add their logo without their permission. You also can’t bypass this by re-writing it or making it into a pdf or similar. Best to be straight as you don’t want media coverage to cause any issues.
Your brand kit / multimedia elements
Include your logo and logo guidelines, any photographs, infographics, graphics or videos that will help illustrate what you do. You can link from a pdf to a shared folder like dropbox or google drive – or directly from your website. That makes it easy for journalists to download them rather than having huge attachments.
If you need help with creating your brand kit with your logo, fonts, colours and brand visuals, or a website that can accommodate this information, get in touch with us to see how we can help.
Awards / memberships / accolades
If you have any recent and relevant awards, mention them. This doesn’t have to be an elaborate section, but it will again help with reputation building.
Contact details
Don’t forget to have all your contact details in your media kit. This includes any social media channels where you are active, as well as traditional phone numbers, email addresses and names of the best person to approach with any questions or opportunities for coverage.
In essence, press kits should give journalists a flavour of your brand that contains all the relevant background info and gives them an appetite for more. It’s a collection of visual and editorial facts about your company and gives journalists a helping hand if they see an opportunity to feature you.
While 2020 took every business by surprise, it revealed a new shift in customer trends that are likely to continue in 2021. As we head into the New Year, now is the time for your hotel or hospitality business to re-evaluate their marketing strategies to increase sales, encourage customer engagement and create meaningful experiences that go beyond face to face marketing.
Our 2021 marketing ideas for the hospitality industry
Whilst we are still struggling with lockdowns, check out our top eight marketing ideas your hotel or hospitality business could look at. Some will work well to keep in touch with customers whilst localities remain shut. Others are great to put in place for when you are able to re-open.
1. Virtual tours of your property
If we’ve learned anything from COIVD-19, it’s that there are so many creative ways to use technology to engage your guests. Providing virtual tours of your property using technology, such as virtual reality, allows your guests to feel like they’re experiencing your property from the comfort of their own home.
You can take your guests on a complete walkthrough of your hospitality property, highlight your amenities and show the type of experience customers would have if they decide to visit. According to GuestCentric, properties that offer some type of virtual tour are clicked on ten times more than properties without this technology.
2. Interactive event experiences
A great way to stay in touch is to offer extra value to your customers. While it’s easy to send over a brochure of your company and ask customers to book with you, why not also provide something extra to your customers lives. Think about creating a live event, where you can invite guests in-person and host online at the same time. This is a very effective way to create unique guest experiences.
For example, if you’re a restaurant that specializes in French cuisine, host a live event with one of your chefs to teach viewers how to make a traditional dish or drink at home.
You can allow guests to ask questions and make comments to create an interactive event. You add value to your customers everyday life, provide fresh content and establish yourself as the authority in the hospitality business sector and creating engaging marketing content.
3. Take advantage of social media
Social media platforms are always changing and offering new ways for businesses to connect with their customers. For example, Instagram now offers reels. Reels are short videos between 15-30 seconds long that can be created to connect with your audience. Instagram also rolled out an online shopping platform, so you can connect your products directly to your Instagram, with relevant links to buy these products on your profile.
Especially during a lockdown, social media is amazingly versatile and effective to keep in the minds of guest and to attract new visitors in future. Showing people behind the scenes, your kitchen, gardens, any refurbishments, how you remember your hotel from the past year, take out menus and special event boxes all give plenty of content to share online.
Another great social media platform that has made waves this year is TikTok. With over 800 million users active on the platform, TikTok is a great way to reach potential customers through videos. Many brands participate in the trends users create on the application, finding ways to relate it to their own business. If a video is interesting, it may become “viral” and draw extra attention towards your brand.
4. Utilise text message marketing
Customers love when you can simplify things, and almost everyone uses a smart device, so utilising text message marketing is a great way to stay in touch with your guests. Once you are open again, you can use it to make life easier for bookings and extras.
No new technology is needed, and once they opt in, it will open a portal for easy communication. There are a variety of ways you can use text message marketing in your business to provide an exceptional experience to your guests.
You’re able to:
• Confirm reservations and provide instructions on how to get to your venue
• Allow guests to make requests, such as extra blankets or towels, directly through a text. You can use text messaging to confirm the request and let them know when their supplies will arrive
• Keep customers updated on activities or events that are being offered on your property
• Provide discounts, deals or offer extra services to your guests as part of your hospitality marketing plan
5. Create a loyalty program
Offering a loyalty program is one of the easiest ways to connect with your customers in the new year.
Creating a loyalty program can either be a physical or digital program that customers join when they visit. It will allow them to have benefits after spending money at your location. For example, hotels like the Hilton will let guests accumulate “points” every time they visit their properties. These can be used for free hotel stays and benefits like free upgrades.
If you’re an attraction or restaurant, you can offer a free meal or visit after a certain amount of times. Make sure to ask your guests for feedback on what they enjoy about the program. That way you can tailor it to fit your specific business needs.
6. Integrate chatbots on your website
Imagine being able to answer all of your customer’s questions and concerns at any time of the day, without having to even pick up the phone. One of the top marketing trends for 2021 is to integrate a chatbot on your website. A chatbot provides businesses the power to stay in touch with customers, offer support, and answer important questions, 24/7.
Chatbots are a pre-programed application that can answer customer questions and help book a reservation. They can even connect them with a specialist when a customer lands on your website. This application even has the ability to respond to customers in multiple languages with its automatic language detections.
Chatbots are game changers, especially for businesses who don’t have staff working around the clock.
They can also be useful to share your safety procedures to make your venue COVID safe and re-assure them by answering repeat questions about booking and cancellation policies, changing opening hours etc.
7. Use influencer marketing
People are more likely to follow suggestions made by those they trust and look up to, instead of an advertisement. Influencer marketing is when you reach out to an individual that has an established
audience that matches your target audience, and offer to collaborate to promote yourself to their audience.
There are many ways you can do this including written content, videos, or social media posts.
To track if this method works for your business, companies will offer a discount code that the influencer will promote to their audience. Tracking the success of this code, and overall analytics of your website/business, will help you to track the efforts of your campaign.
8. Collaborate within the industry
Collaboration is a great way to market your business and enhance your guest experience.
For example, if you run a restaurant, you might want to partner up with a hotel to offer their guests a special discount if they visit your establishment.
Or if you’re a hotel, maybe you want to partner with a tour company to offer great rates, and exclusivity of their group booking needs. These partnerships not only help your business grow, they help the entire industry grow.
There are many more marketing techniques that can be integrated into your hotel or hospitality business in 2021. Creative, interactive brand marketing ideas that excite your guests will really make the difference in whether you reach a higher value of customers or if you blend in with the crowd.
Have a look at our hotel branding and design portfolio to see examples of hospitality marketing in action. You can read more about our branding and design work in the luxury hotel and restaurant sector here.
We would love to help your business with branding, marketing and design. Drop us a note for a free consultation.
K.I.S.S. stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. It’s a a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy back in 1960. If you are a linguist, you may just need to ignore the obvious flaw in the abbreviation…
K.I.S.S. is a great principle that can be applied to many situations. (Nobody likes things complicated).
Looking at your brand strategy, for example. Make sure your brand message is really simple. So simple, that everyone in your audience can ‘get it’. That way you can reach everyone you intend to – and you don’t alienate people with industry jargon. (Nobody wants to feel stupid.)
If you don’t have a clear vision for your brand, your audience won’t stand a chance. (Not even if they are mind readers).
Just like a brand strategy, your brand identity shouldn’t be complicated, either. Clutter never helps – not in your home and especially not in your brand and marketing material. A clear and simple message doesn’t have to be boring, you an use beautiful typography and photography, textures and finishes (if you print) to let every little element of your marketing material tell your story.
Go ahead, give your brand a big K.I.S.S.!
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