Monthly Archives: April 2021

We’re all experts at working from home now. We’ve Zoomed until the cows came home… and sometimes they came home in the background of our Zoom calls. We should all be experts at making our videos and calls GREAT by now, right? Wrong.

There are still many mistakes being made – some because we just don’t care anymore because 2021 is almost as long as 2020 already, but some we were never that good in the first place. It’s not too late – because video calls are here to stay for-EVAH.

Here’s my five step guide to making you look the best you can, without forking out a fortune in Hollywood-studio-grade gear.

Not all lights are created equal

I’m pretty sure shares in ring lights went as sky high as Peloton bikes this past year – but let’s just be clear, while a ring light can offer Instagram-filter-esque balanced glows to many of us, they aren’t a fit for everyone.

If you wear glasses in particular, ring lights can sometimes have the horrific effect of making you look like a mad owl, reflecting those circles into your lenses, sometimes positioned right around your irises,

and completely detracting from anything smart you want to say. The results of a pre-SuperBowl press conference on Andy Reid’s glasses are a perfect example, and memes about him started trending almost immediately.

If you’ve already invested in a ring light and you wear glasses, to prevent a similar issue, you need to put the light up higher than your face – so it’s not shining directly at you – and then angle it down slightly. You can also adjust the brightness on some lights, so play around with that, and make it a softer, less blue light.

The go-to should still be good old-fashioned natural light wherever possible – putting your computer or camera between you and your natural light source. Ideally, avoid direct, bright sunlight – if the sun is out and offers you any more than a full-face, balanced soft light, using sheer curtains can filter that nasty blinding-light, and diffuse the rays so you look glowy, and the way nature intended.

Do You Want Chins With That Face?

It’s a fairly well-known fact that we should never have photos taken from below our eye-line, and the same goes for video. If your work-from-home desk setup is normal, your computer is likely well below your eye-line.

For video calls, put your computer on some books and get the camera lined up as close to your eye-line as possible. Even better, if you have a stand-up desk, crank it a bit higher than your eye-line. A camera shooting down rather than up, will banish extra chins and will make your head into more of an inverted triangle shape, which is more appealing than it sounds.

As well, make sure you know where the camera is on your device! This couldn’t be more ‘page one’, but it’s incredible how many people are still looking at the person they’re talking to on their screen, rather than the camera. This is fine and not super noticeable on a video call, but for a TV interview, your face will be magnified, and where you’re looking becomes more apparent.

How You Sound Is Just As Important As How You Look

Terrible quality audio will probably be the worst legacy of all the videos created during lockdown. You can obviously hear yourself in your room perfectly well – but honestly MOST of the videos and calls I’ve been on this past year, and many of the videos and podcasts I have listened to, have had awful telephone-quality audio, which can be caused by a number of issues.

Firstly – your microphone. You might have a really great computer, but that doesn’t mean the microphone is equally fantastic. Use an external mic wherever possible – and this might be one that is built into your headphones. You will need decent headphones though, so invest in something decent if you’re doing this a lot. Know that anything nearer your mouth will be better than a further-away computer mic that picks up all the sounds around you.

As well, your wifi is going to be really important when it comes to the audio quality. Of course we only really think about the wifi quality when we can’t SEE people due to technical issues, but it can also really affect the sound without us realizing, because – see above – we can’t hear what we sound like to other people. For live calls, it’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world, but if you’re making videos that you want to last longer, invest in some audio gear that will enhance the quality of your voice.

Background Check

There’s a lot been said about the backgrounds we’ve all had to show to our co-workers this year, and if your video is going to be seen by a wider audience, there’s the danger that something you’ve left lurking on a shelf could lead to a swift cancellation of your career.

Be aware of what’s behind you, test out your video beforehand by setting the camera to selfie or video mode, and then move ANYTHING that could detract from – or worse, become the focus of – your on-camera performance.

Now, I’m not Keith Baldrey’s boss at Global BC. But if I were, then my first order of business would be permanently clearing off the shelves of books he’s untidily promoting during a global pandemic. Sure, we’ve all been straining to see what’s in the living rooms of our favourite celebrities for more than a year now – but it can look messy (especially if the books are falling over like in this photo), and cheap.

Be aware that your background can become more interesting than you, and know that your face, and what you are saying, competes with every single thing around you. Check your background before you click the Zoom link.

Oh – and number five – don’t forget to smile!

Have questions about marketing or communications? Schedule a quick call with us today!

A lot of B2B sales agents think that marketing is all about making a sale, and to some degree they are right. The purpose of marketing is to increase sales, but purpose-driven marketing is much more sophisticated than casting a large net and seeing what you pull in. It involves creating a customer avatar (also known as a buyer persona) so you can target buyers who are likely to bite.

Once you identify the type of person your brand, product, service, etc appeals to, you can create marketing materials that make them immediately look your way. The result is increased sales and strengthened word-of-mouth referrals because birds of a feather flock together.

Building a customer avatar requires a bit of creativity and some industry savvy, but once you create your first buyer persona the value of the template will become clear. Instead of marketing blindly, the person you create will come to life making it a lot easier to craft a sales pitch that will land. Think of it as casting with a smaller net, but always landing near clusters of fish. The trick is making sure you know where to cast the net, which is the purpose of your customer avatar.

Essential Tips to Remember When Creating a Customer Avatar:

1. Give Them a Name – It seems almost too simple, but a name helps personalize the process. Assigning a name makes the profile jump off the page and come to life in your mind and office discussions.
2. Assign Them Demographics – Use your previous market research to assign demographics to your avatar. These should include their age, gender, marital status, location, children (or lack thereof), job income, and education. It should also include a few fun facts that are specific to your average customer. If you need help, comb through your best clients and look at what they have in common or scour your social media followers. Don’t be afraid to get creative, the more personalized your avatar is the easier the marketing campaign will be to write.
3. Craft Goals and Values – Now that you know who your customer avatar is, you need to give him or her a few goals to bring them to life. For instance, maybe your ideal client is 37 with three children and is a momager by day and a trader by night. She values family, but her ultimate goal is to find streamlined investment opportunities that only take her a few clicks to complete. Now you have a better look at your ideal client and know exactly how to appeal to her needs.
4. Identify “Where” Your Customer Is – It’s not enough to identify who your customer is because you need to know where to find them. This involves knowing “where” their interests lie. While building the customer avatar you should include a section that addresses their interests such as favourite blogs, favourite business idols, favourite social media networks, and favourite stores. This component of the avatar will help drive where you launch your marketing campaign helping to add to its effectiveness.

Acknowledge Your Customer’s Weaknesses – Before you can market your product as a solution, you need to identify the problem that it solves. This problem should be clearly identified within your customer avatar by creating a list of challenges and/or pain points. For example, the mom mentioned earlier is frustrated that she never has time to herself, and is worried that she isn’t spending enough time growing her income. She fears failing both as a mother and an investor. Now you know her vulnerabilities, you know exactly how to reach out to her with a solution she will embrace. This last step helps brings the process full circle and allows you to fine-tune your final approach.

Have more questions about customer avatars? Or need to know what to do once you’ve reached them? Curve is happy to help. Click here to schedule a no-strings-attached chat with us!

When you think of a landing page, what comes to mind? Most likely you think of your company homepage or a product sales page. In truth, a landing page can be anything, but its purpose is the same: to steer visitors towards a sale, subscription, or future contact. A good landing page is not judged by its appearance (although sleek and smooth designs do help), but rather by its conversion rate. So how do you boost your conversion rate?

While it would be nice if there was an amazing formula or template that you could use to create a high-converting landing page, it’s just not that simple. Every landing page needs to be carefully customized to meet the needs of its audience and its specific call to action (CTA). That means you have to approach the process with an open mind, a clear vision, and a lot of flexibility and creativity. The good news is that there are a few recurring elements that can help provide a basic framework to guide the process.

Determine Your Goal

Remember a landing page can be anything; it doesn’t have to be your homepage. Before creating your landing page you need to clearly define your goal. Do you want it to encourage people to browse products on your website? Check out a specific new product? Join your email list? Sign up for your newsletter? Define your goal and then make sure every single person that ends up on your landing page knows it too.

Put It In Your Headline

Your headline is easily the most important part of your landing page. Conversion rates can grow and die by the headline. The headline is your chance to make a first impression. No pressure, but you need to use your headline to grab the interest of your target audience, offer them something worthwhile, and compel them to stick around for your CTA. Oh yeah, and you need to accomplish this in about ten words. Short and sweet almost always wins when it comes to landing pages.

Reiterate it In Your Subheadings

Now that you have the visitor’s attention, you need to act on it. Subheadings should be persuasive, detailed, and add depth to your goal. You have a few more words to work with now, so use them wisely to sell visitors on your goal.

Support Your CTA with Powerful Imagery

Visitors have a habit of skipping text. Sadly, a large majority of visitors won’t read more than your headline and possibly first subhead, so you need to make sure you appeal to all of their senses. Creating a visually captivating landing page is one way to keep them focused on what you are offering. Support your final CTA with powerful imagery that grabs their attention and makes it impossible to click away.

Bring it Home

A lot of businesses spend so much time on their landing page design that the CTA becomes an afterthought. Your CTA is not just a sentence you pop on at the bottom of the page; it is the very heart of your landing page. Every single thing on your page should lead the visitor towards it. This is your chance to close the deal. Make sure your CTA is very clear and easily accessible on the landing page. Create an easily identifiable button, limit redirects, and make it as simple as possible to convert.

Think of your visitors like water: water will always take the path of least resistance. Offer this path to your visitors and your conversion rates will rise naturally.

Need some help building a high-converting landing page? We’re always happy to chat.

When it comes to writing engaging, interesting, and worthwhile content, our copywriters and social media specialists here at Curve are always on the lookout for new online resources to strengthen their copywriting skills.

We understand that copywriting can mean a bunch of different things, depending on your business, brand, and offerings. This means that sometimes we’re writing short and sweet social media posts and sometimes we’re writing long-form numbers-based case studies and in-depth blog posts on niche topics.

To help our future selves, and our readers, we gathered our top five resources that every copywriter should be using, no matter what kind of content they’re producing.

Grammarly

Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a beginner copywriter, checking your grammar is a must. It can really make or break your content! That’s why, like many other people, we love Grammarly. It’s the easiest way to stay on top of your grammar, punctuation, and tenses – something that can go unnoticed when you’re writing longer-form content. Plus, it’s a great alternative to re-reading your content which often leads us to miss a couple of errors. Grammarly offers a free and a paid version, so you can choose what plan will work best for you and your team.

Answer the Public

We understand that coming up with SEO-friendly blog content can be tough, so we turn to search listening tools like Answer the Public to get those creative juices flowing. By analyzing keywords and utilizing search listening capabilities, Answer the Public helps you take the guesswork out of writing content by showing you the most current trends for your specific topic or niche. When we’re struggling to write content-rich blogs and social media posts for our clients, or if we’re struggling to find the best blog title, we turn to Answer the Public to get a better understanding of what’s hot.

Headline Analyzer

Headline Analyzer is another great tool for copywriters. It helps you come up with headlines that drive traffic, shares, and search results directly to your content. By taking into consideration things like the optimal character count and word count, sentiment, word balance, and skimmability, Headline Analyzer is a great tool to help you make your content more eye-catching and SEO-friendly.

HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator

Struggling to come up with fresh and exciting blog content and titles? Hubspot’s Blog Ideas Generator is an amazing free tool. It works by gathering up to five nouns of your choice and auto-generating catchy titles for your blogs. This is a great tool if you’re stumped on your title and the structure of your blog. So, if you have a general understanding of what you’d like to write about, why not plug your keywords into HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator for help with a title and format that works for your content?

Hemingway App

For those of you who are writing longer-form content-rich pieces, Hemingway App might be your new favourite online tool. By identifying common errors that reduce the readability and quality of your writing, Hemingway App easily highlights these errors using their colour-coded system. It also offers tips on restructuring hard-to-read sentences, using simple alternative synonyms, and minimizing your use of passive voice.

Conclusion

For many of us, copywriting can be a doomed task, but it doesn’t have to be! With these five resources under your belt, you’ll find that your copywriting skills will improve, and you’ll get into a rhythm where writing content comes naturally to you.

Interested in working with the Curve team for content creation and copywriting? Shoot us a message here to book an appointment with our team.