Digital Marketing Agency

How To Turn Your Media Spokesperson Into a Superstar

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One of my favourite things to do at Curve is media training.

As a former journalist and a TV producer, one of my jobs was to get people to give reporters answers to questions that they REALLY didn’t want to answer during a news interview.

Those tactics included wording questions in a very specific and strategic way so that you get the answer you need or want, or leaving a gap when people have finished speaking because very often – due to an abject fear of awkward silences in conversations – people will start speaking again and say the one thing they shouldn’t have said into a microphone. 

Now I’m on the other side, it’s my job to prep potential interviewees for their close-up, and to keep them on message, no matter what is thrown at them.

Something for all medium-to-large businesses to remember is that your CEO isn’t necessarily the best person for the job. Sure – they’ve got the title, but if they’re uncomfortable in an interview situation – especially when they might be grilled – things could go disastrously wrong, meaning there could be consequences for the entire company. Often when I’m doing media training, it’s to a room full of people rather than just one-on-one, since more than one person should be prepped for different scenarios. After the group sessions wrap up, whether I’m asked or not, I tell the person who booked me who their go-to person should be if the media ever comes knocking. 

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 Things your media spokesperson should be able to do:

  • Have the ability to be amiable – not patronizing – in a one-on-one situation
  • Be able to repeat key messaging when answering questions, rather than being sidetracked or getting emotionally involved in a conversation
  • Convey a calm-in-a-storm personality that conveys control, even (especially!) in a crisis

Once you’ve got your ideal spokesperson, the next thing to do is get them to memorize the company key messaging. If you don’t have key messaging, then what’s the ONE thing you would want to come out of the interview? Maybe it’s something like:

“The health and safety of our employees and our customers is the top priority at all times, and we’ll do whatever it takes to enforce that.”

…but whatever it is, this statement should be repeated in EVERY answer that’s given in the interview – for a pre-taped interview anyway! Chances are the reporter will only use one clip, and you want that message to be included in all answers, so that it gets used. In fact, when it makes sense to do so, make it the ONLY thing you say as an answer. But stick to your key messaging, and if you use the phrase at the end of the answer, it will also discourage you from continuing to speak and saying something that’s NOT on brand.

Try to find out if the interview is on camera. Even if it’s an interview for print or online, there’s still a good chance it will be recorded on a phone – which has a camera. Content is key for media, so assume people will be seen, and prep accordingly. Just because Boris Johnson gets away with it, doesn’t mean anyone else should!

If there’s a question where the answer isn’t known, be honest. Trying to fudge an answer will sound WAY worse than saying: “I don’t have that information right now – but I’ll try and get it for you later – can you call me in an hour?” Then you have control of when and how that information is disseminated.

And finally – although maybe this should have come first – be open. Putting someone out there to talk to media – even in the worst situations – will put you in a much better light than not commenting on things at all. As long as you control the messaging and have a strong spokesperson in place, you shouldn’t need to worry. And as always, if you need help, we’re here for you!

If you would like to book Curve Communications for your media training needs, contact us.

Person in front of laptop

How to Sell Without Trade Shows (Warning: Humans need to do some of the work)

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We are undoubtedly experiencing a paradigm shift in regards to how we conduct business with each other. Curve Communications works hand in hand with businesses in different industries, including manufacturing, education, health care and equipment companies. We work closely with our clients on all aspects of their B2B marketing needs, with a specific focus on driving leads through inbound and outbound customer-centric content, events, and advertising.

The COVID-19 crisis changed things significantly, especially as it pertains to how companies interact and communicate with potential customers via avenues like trade shows, conferences and more.

It may be a long time before we see any kind of normalcy return to the way companies conduct B2B marketing. With that kind of uncertain future, companies like yours have to start re-thinking marketing plans for the year ahead. The good news is that this is not forever. Any new initiatives and techniques you implement now will complement your other – well-established channels, down the road. 

One area of opportunity that you may or may not be familiar with, or that you perhaps know the techniques of, but not the terminology, is Account-Based Marketing (ABM).

ABM is a strategic approach to business marketing based on account awareness, in which an organization considers and communicates with individual prospect or customer accounts as if they were markets of one. ABM helps you increase your customer account relevance, engage earlier with leads, close bigger deals, align your marketing activity with sales strategies, get the best value out of marketing, inspire leads with compelling content, and identify specific contacts at companies that will convert into paying customers.

So many of Curve’s clients have relied on trade shows for lead generation and overall sales, but with the world in flux, we are working closely with our clients to move them more aggressively towards a solid ABM strategy.

Trade shows have traditionally been very advantageous for most business-to-business marketing. The reason: your audience is gathered in one place where you can network and sell, one-on-one. You get to build trust with leads in real-time in real life. Interacting with warm leads, who have been brought together in one place, hanging out at their booths, at industry talks, at the cafes and, yes, at the bars.

Convenient, done for you, all in one place — who doesn’t love a good trade show to grow business? So that means the temporary loss of the beloved trade show is a big loss in the B2B marketing toolbox. And while there are current attempts for virtual trade shows as a replacement, it’s just not the same. Technology is not yet sophisticated enough to provide the 3 or 4D, AR or VR experience we might dream about. However, technology in a different way, using account-based marketing techniques and tools, might be the golden ticket, because doing nothing is not an option. In fact, there is significant proof that now is the best time to start marketing more than you ever have, and the opportunity for long-term growth is better during a recession than any other time.

If you are an experienced business owner or sales representative for a business, then we are sure you have seen and experienced several ups and downturns of the economy. On the other hand, you have never seen anything like the COVID-19 crisis that we are currently experiencing, but that is no reason for your company to stop its marketing efforts.

Evidence from the Great Depression of the 1920s to the more recent economic crisis of 2008 proves that if you market in a down economy, then you are more likely to be prosperous to a greater degree than before, once the economy recovers.

Person in front of laptop

Interesting Facts

According to Harvard Business Review, 200 companies were followed through the economic recession of 1923 to 1927. The investigation showed that the largest increases in sales were experienced by the companies that advertised the most during that period.

During the recession that occurred between 1981 and 1982, McGraw-Hill research showed firms that increased their spending on marketing during that period averaged significantly higher sales growth, both during the recession and in the three years following the recession than those who decreased spending on marketing. By 1985, revenue growth among the aggressive recession advertisers was 256% faster than among those who had reduced their advertising activity.

More recently, a Yankelovich/Harris study found that the vast majority (86%) of executives say that when a company markets in a down economy, it makes them feel more positive about the company’s commitment to its products, and, more importantly, it keeps those firms top-of-mind when purchase decisions are made.

The above studies should be enough to convince you of the importance of marketing in a down economy if you weren’t already convinced. On the other hand, we are living in unprecedented times and facing a crisis that has never been faced in modern times, so traditional marketing approaches like trade shows and promotional events may not serve you as they did prior to the COVID-19 crisis.

This by no means is a reason to stop: you need to find new ways to reach your audience.  

The process of replacing, albeit temporarily, your trade show marketing plan with an account-based marketing system requires several steps to maximize success. And because ABM relies on significant use of digital marketing, you need to lay the groundwork first. This means having a customer relationships management (CRM) system coupled with marketing automation tools.

Your CRM and Marketing Automation

Computer with CRM

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a technology for managing all of your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. A CRM system helps companies stay connected to customers, streamline processes, and improve profitability. Most of the clients we work with have some kind of CRM, whether it be Salesforce, Microsoft, SharpSpring or others (we provide a partial list of systems at the end of this post); however, the power of a good CRM is when you connect it with a marketing automation system, which is usually part of a package deal offered by CRM providers.

Tapping into the power of a CRM and its marketing automation system requires that you first have your CRM set up and that your team understands how to use it properly. A lot of salespeople use a CRM as a simple database to track leads for emailing or phone calls. However, your CRM coupled with marketing automation is so much more.

Marketing automation is the use of software to automate marketing activities. Marketing automation allows companies and marketing departments to function more effectively across multiple online channels.

Marketing automation streamlines certain marketing processes such as email marketing, social media posting and even running advertising campaigns. They not only provide efficiency, but also provide customers with a much more personalized experience than they would otherwise have. 

With CRM and marketing automation set up properly, you can track how people behave on your website, what they download, how long they watch a video, when they come back to the site and so on. All of this information is then provided to you in real-time via a sophisticated digital platform that alerts you at the right time. But it also automates simple tasks: for example, when someone downloads your e-book or watches your webinar, they are then put into an email sales sequence to keep the conversation going, but with the ultimate goal of setting up a meeting with sales.

At Curve Communications, we spend a great deal of time developing customer personas for our clients. It is a crucial step as part of your account-based marketing planning, along with defining a unique selling proposition. Surprisingly, when we onboard a new client, we discover many have not created a profile of their perfect customer. Once they do, with our help, so much of their strategy for marketing and sales becomes more clear. With no persona(s) defined, a business can spend a lot of time and money on marketing to the wrong person — and that will not lead to success. In B2B marketing, quality over quantity is the preference.

The process is simple. If you picture your perfect customer, vividly answer the following points, describing them before they purchase your product: their age, profession or job title, background, other demographic information, hobbies, marital status, mental/physical health, what they do online (think of people + public figures, magazines, books and authors, brands, big businesses, organizations, products + services, and more.)

Once you have defined the perfect customer persona, you need to start researching and adding them into your CRM so that you can track the relationships and the success of your ABM strategy.

Ask yourself: 

  • How many accounts/businesses fit your ideal customer profile?
  • Have you been able to identify the decision-makers and influencers in each account?
  • Do you have the data to reach all the stakeholders at each account?
  • Have you properly set up a way to track individuals in each of the right accounts that you are able to reach?

Content is King

Laptop with title content is king

Rather than launching a broad marketing campaign that attracts thousands in an attempt to nurture only the few that express their interest, ABM targets specific companies in a bid to engage with key decision-makers and then build on that relationship to gain their trust and land more sales. You do this with content.

At a trade show, you build trust and make sales because you get the opportunity to interact with a potential lead three or four times throughout the event. It may be at a speaking engagement, at your booth, or afterwards while having a drink at the bar. But when you only have the phone and a computer, the personal touch offered at a trade show is replicated with multiple touchpoints via meaningful content.

In a report from ITSMA, 87% of marketers measuring ROI say that Account-Based Marketing outperforms other marketing investments. Email marketing has an ROI two times higher than cold calling, networking or trade shows. You can generate and use content that can be a replacement for the small talk you will typically encounter at trade shows.

The type of content you create should not only build the level of engagement but also the level of trust with your audience. Content comes in many forms but some are more key than others.

Start with your website. The best way to keep visitors on your site is through valuable content, good organization and attractive design. Keep your site simple and well organized. In the end, it needs to tell your story and sell your product. One thing that really helps with that is having a section of great case studies.

Profiling the successes that you have had with customers in the past to create content that relates to customers in the future, is the key to closing a client. So, these kinds of cases can be written with visuals, they can be video testimonials, or they can be customer-focused testimonials from the customer’s perspective.

Second, you need to make sure you have a profile video of your company or an ‘About Us’ video. The video can either be posted on your site’s homepage or on your About Us page, and it should show the culture of your business, as well as your number one business dream. It should also showcase a couple of case studies that relate to what you do, and how successful you have made your customers. It is always important to remember that your website and your content is not about you, it’s about your customers. It is about their success, not yours; how you are solving their problems with your product or service.

Third, you need to present your product or service offering in a simple but clear way. Visuals are the best way for you to achieve that goal. A one-page sales document is the most common example of doing so. Ensure you fill the page with great photos and detailed information.

Fourth: webinars. Sometimes it is difficult for a customer to understand how your product or service will help them without walking them through the whole process. So that’s why we always recommend webinars, or maybe three individual videos, live or pre-recorded. This approach instills confidence in your abilities. You can show by example and give them an understanding of how you and your business operations help customers achieve the success they so desire.

Fifth is a whitepaper or e-book. The written word is still a very effective manner of conveying information. It doesn’t have to be a 200-page encyclopedia of information. A well-organized e-book of 2000 to 3000 words on a specific part of what you do or what your product achieves for a client will suffice.

As part of account-based marketing, great content helps develop quality customer relationships. It is all about building trust with your customers and potential leads. The more quality content you have, the more you can engage in quality conversations with leads. But successful account-based, content-driven marketing requires automation for scalability and success tracking. To close more deals, you need to reach more quality leads with more content.

With all of this content, a key performance indicator is the quality of engagement. With your CRM platform and marketing automation set properly, you should be able to measure the follow-ing about your audience:

  •   Time spent consuming your content
  •   Volume of content being consumed (how many assets did the audience visit)
  •   Span of the content consumed (did the audience visit your wider digital estate)
  •   Attendance at events, both online and in person
  •   Intensity of the engagement (is it increasing as your programs progress)
  •   The more engaged the lead is with the content — the more likely they are to convert.

What Does the Future Hold? 

The future is always uncertain. However, you can be sure of one thing. If you engage in account-based (ABM), content-focused marketing and you add in a solid CRM with marketing automation, you will be ahead of the curve when the COVID-19 crisis is over.

Trade shows are great. And they will be back once we are through this crisis. If you take the time to develop a solid ABM strategy, you will certainly be better positioned to scale your business with the combination of your trade show circuit and amazing follow-up with high-quality content.

List of CRMs and Marketing Automation Systems

CRM graphic

There are more than 50 platforms to choose from. Below are some of the ones Curve Communications’ clients use. As an agency, we remain agnostic about which one your company should install. We are a partner of the SharpSpring system but we recommend you look and test at least three platforms before making a decision. Think about your budgets and how well your team will embrace the choice based on your own internal systems. 

  1. Salesforce.com coupled with Pardot.com is a cloud-based Customer Relationship Manage-ment (CRM) application and marketing automation system.
  2. Monday.com is a cloud-based Work OS, where teams create workflow apps in minutes to run their processes, projects, and everyday work.
  3. Hubspot.com is a CRM that takes care of all the little details from recording calls, logging emails, and managing data.
  4. Keap.com (formerly Infusionsoft) is an all-in-one sales & marketing software designed for entrepreneurs, startups and larger teams.
  5. Salesflare.com is a CRM solution for small businesses & startups, designed to reduce the time spent on data input.
  6. SharpSpring.com is a comprehensive marketing automation platform with robust features, functionality and performance. SharpSpring is one of the most flexible platforms on the market, offering powerful, behaviour-based email marketing, and native or third-party CRM integration.
  7. ActiveCampaign.com gives you the email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM tools you need to create incredible customer experiences.
  8. Agilecrm.com is a fully integrated CRM with sales tracking, contact management, marketing automation, web analytics, two-way emails, telephony, helpdesk, and a clean modern interface.
  9. ClickDimensions.com is the only complete marketing solution for Microsoft Dynamics, made exclusively for and natively built within Dynamics CRM.
  10. Zoho.com is an all-in-one marketing automation software that helps you successfully manage your marketing activities across multiple channels. Generate more leads, convert them to customers, and retain them longer.

You don’t need trade shows to win at trade show marketing.

Get in touch with Curve and start selling virtually.

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5 Tips and Tricks to Streamline Your InDesign Process – Part 1

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When it comes to InDesign, or any of the Adobe products for that matter, if you don’t know the shortcuts, projects can sometimes take a lot longer than they need to. While Adobe InDesign allows users to create eye-catching designs and sleek layouts without extensive industry knowledge, knowing a few tips and tricks beyond the basics can make a world of difference in how efficiently you can get the job done.

InDesign is commonly used for e-books, magazines, posters, and other digital products and doesn’t require a degree in computer engineering to master. Here are a few insider tips that will help you keep your InDesign projects efficient and consistent.

Woman creating design on a laptop

1. Get to know the find and replace function

Looking for small sections of your text in a magazine spread can get old real fast, which is why you need to learn how to use the find and replace function from the start. This is especially useful when you get to the optimization portion of your product and need to switch around keywords and/or keyword phrases.

Simply select the section of text you want to work with, click on “edit” and then the “find/change” option (or, even faster, Cmd+F on Mac / Ctrl+F on PC), and in a few seconds, you will be done and can move onto more complex tasks.

2. Automatically populate text

At first, adding text to your layout can feel like a tedious task. Attempting to get enough text on a page without too much overfill can start to feel like a game of Tetris—one that you are painfully losing. Don’t worry, there’s a fix! Instead of panicking when you see the red plus sign that appears on the right of the text frame to tell you there is overset text (and consequently adjusting your font size to try and make it fit), simply learn to thread frames together. Just click the red plus sign and then line it up with the next frame and your leftover text will automatically populate that next frame.

This is a process known as threading, and you can do it easily at the start of the project. If you’ve added text into a frame and see the red plus sign indicating overset text, click on the plus sign and then, while holding down the shift key, simply click in every single margin and that overflow text will automatically populate into new, connected text frames.

3. Clean up your layout

Your final InDesign layout becomes a big part of your brand identity, so you need that layout to be crisp, clean, and attractive. Spruce up your page content by adding witty captions, centered paragraphs, and key pull quotes that instantly attract readers’ eyes. You may still notice you have some ragged lines that are distracting to a reader, but you can easily fix this by selecting the problem text and then clicking on the “Paragraph” panel. From there, open up the options drop-down by clicking the three horizontal lines in the top right of the panel, and selecting “balance ragged lines.” And voila! The problem is fixed in seconds.

A last note on layout, and we can’t stress this enough: don’t forget about the importance of white space! Once your layout is looking beautiful, it’s crucial that you give it space to breathe.

4. Use the eyedropper colour theme tool

Of course, when it comes to visual appeal, colour is going to play a large role. The eyedropper colour theme tool is designed to help make it easy to sample colours and craft your own palette from which to work. Head to the main “Tools” panel and select the eyedropper icon so that you can sample colours from the images being used in your design, to make your own colour theme panel. These swatches of colour will then automatically pop up any time you click an image, text, or graphic, so you can instantly add a cohesive feel to the entire piece.

5. Maximize Preview mode

Preview mode is your chance to see the way browsers will see your final product, so you want to make sure you get the most out of your review process. The “W” on your keyboard is a quick shortcut that turns preview mode on and off. This allows you to evaluate your work while you’re moving through your design process.

While in preview mode, make sure to hit command (on Mac) or control (on PC) along with the plus and minus (+/-) keys, to instantly zoom in and out to see your designs up close. This is a great way to look for things that might be throwing off your design like bleeds, line blocks, or guides.

Warning: you’ll want to ensure you do not have the Type tool selected when you use the “W” to switch to preview mode, or you’ll end up with accidental, wayward “W”s in your text! (I had a Design instructor once threaten to deduct points from assignments if he ever saw any errant “W”s in our projects.)

There are so many shortcuts and useful tools in InDesign that will help you generate designs in the most efficient way possible, and this little blog was just the tip of the iceberg! In fact, one of the best features about InDesign is the way it relies on outlines and themes to help you produce consistent, streamlined projects. You just need to know how to set things up. (So watch for a future blog on some of the ways you can create styles and master pages to simplify your work in InDesign!)

Have more questions? Need help designing a magazine, website, e-book, brochure…? Curve is more than happy to help. Click here to schedule a no-strings-attached chat with us.

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Where to Find The Best Free Content/Stock Images

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So you wrote an awesome post for Instagram or Facebook, a mind-blowing blog for your website or some incredible copy for an ad… Now you need THE photo to illustrate it, and you don’t want to pay for a single file or for a subscription to a stock website. And now you don’t have to! Because we’ve created a list of some of our favourite websites where you can get FREE images and content.

 A person searching for images

1. Pixabay (https://pixabay.com)

First on our list is Pixabay, which has everything you might need: photos, vectors, illustrations, videos AND music! All high quality and no attributions needed (meaning you don’t have to credit the creator) – simply download the file you want and use it! 

 

2. Pexels (https://www.pexels.com)

Pexels is a photo and video resource near and dear to our hearts. The coolest thing about Pexels is how they organize the site. You can browse by collections (like “The Great Outdoors”), by topics (for example: “Food Photography”), or even by colour!

 

3. Iconfinder (https://www.iconfinder.com)

If you need an icon or illustration, you can find it on Iconfinder. A great feature of this website is that it gives you the ability to customize the icon before downloading it. You can change the colours, add or delete elements, edit the alignment, and more. Iconfinder has both free and paid content, so make sure to filter the results by selecting “free” on the left menu.

 

4. Canva (https://www.canva.com)

Canva is probably our favourite here at Curve. If you don’t consider yourself creative or don’t want to design something from scratch, go with Canva. They have incredible photos that you can add to their many templates. The one downside is that you can’t download the photo itself; it is for use within one of their templates (which you can then download).

 

5. Google Fonts (https://fonts.google.com)

Finally, to find any font you need, use Google Fonts. Not much explanation needed for this one. You can browse by category (serif, sans serif, display, handwriting, monospace), language, or properties (like thickness, slant, width). One awesome feature is the “pairings” option: once you select a font you like, go to the “Pairings” tab and Google will show you a list of other fonts that look good with the one you liked.

Now you have all the resources you need to create the most beautiful design. But be careful: always read the licensing agreement, attribution requirements and modification permissions before using the content!

Want help with your designs and getting your brand out there? Curve is here for you! Contact us today for a free consultation.

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6 Secrets to Work-from-Home Productivity

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Six Secrets to Successful Work-from-Home Productivity

Over the past year, our team, like many others, worked remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. What started in March 2020 as a bout of stressful Zoom meetings and Slack messages, is now a well-oiled machine. Even as we begin to work from the office, our team can get into a successful #WorkFromHome groove if need be. 

We understand that everyone has a different setup within their home. Some of us have a dedicated desk or office area, while others find themselves at their kitchen table or even on their couch! While we can’t transform everyone’s work-from-home space, we can offer up our secrets to successful productivity. 

In this blog, we’ve rounded up our top six secrets (we just couldn’t narrow it down to five) to maintain productivity no matter where you’re working. 

That’s right – these tips can be implemented both in the office and at home!

1. Our favourite productivity tools

It’s important for us to start with the productivity tools that we use to stay connected with our team and to keep on top of our important deadlines. By using these apps, we’re able to see who can lend a helping hand on a tight deadline and what level of workload each of us has.

For deadlines and daily tasks, our team loves using Asana and Slack. With Asana, we’re able to see our deadlines in real time and keep our clients up to date on what we’re working on for them. As for Slack, it’s a great way for us to stay connected when some team members work remotely. Every morning we each share our list of top priorities for the day and chat about how we can help each other cross everything off our lists!

Tracking our time is a must and for this, we love to use apps like Xero. It’s the easiest way for us to understand who is spending time on what, and it really only takes five minutes at the end of our workday to fill it out. 

2. Be realistic about time management

We all know that we can get overzealous at times, especially when it comes to our day-to-day tasks during a week full of deadlines. Our first secret to successful productivity is to be realistic and work within your means. Yes, it feels amazing to cross everything off that to-do list, but when you’re cramming to get your work done, the result will often be less-than-stellar work. 

It may be easier said than done, but setting realistic goals at the beginning of your work day will help you allocate the right amount of time towards each task. The best part is when you get MORE than your realistic to-do list done in a day, then you’ll have a little something extra to celebrate! ?

3. Make a list, even if it’s overwhelming

To Do List

Being realistic about your time management goes hand in hand with this next secret to successful productivity. 

Here at Curve, we LOVE to-do lists! Seeing everything written out can help you visually block out your days and stop you from spending too much time on one task. We suggest writing out your list and making a note of how much time you’d ideally like to spend on each task. By turning your tasks into a time-based list, you’re able to get more done while feeling less overwhelmed.

4. Designate a workspace

We fully understand that working from home for some of us might not be ideal, especially with kids and fur babies running around. That’s why we’re firm believers that your atmosphere can make or break your productivity.

If you’re working from the couch, or dare we say it, your bedroom, you’ll quickly realize that it’s hard to get in the zone and focus, let alone actually get your work done! We suggest designating a workspace area that has everything you need and nothing you don’t. That doesn’t mean you need an extravagant spare room or completely cordoned-off area of your home to work in, but it does mean that you need a space that is free of distractions and comfortable to work in. 

5. Stick to a routine

Look, we understand that lives have been flipped upside down over this past year. Between working from home, homeschooling, and social distancing, it’s been tough for everyone; but that doesn’t mean you can’t stick to a routine!

Adding a simple structure to your day-to-day routine and your work day can help you feel more productive and cross more off your to-do list. In addition to creating a time-based list, we suggest maintaining a specific window of time for your lunch break, as well as having one or two themed days per week. For example, you could devote a day or two to one kind of task, such as blog writing, or client meetings, and this can really help to open up the rest of your week. 

6. And last, but certainly not least, maintain open communication with your co-workers!

Our final secret to successful work-from-home productivity is to be communicative with your team! This might seem like a no-brainer, but working from home really is different from an office setting. In an office setting, you may not be collaborating with your team all the time, but you can certainly see their social cues, especially when they’re stressed or just having an off day. 

For us, communicating with each other is key to a successful work day. Whether that means having weekly staff meetings to start and end the week, or a daily call where you can list your top priorities, it’s up to you.

Communicate

 

So, now that you have our top secrets to successful work-from-home productivity, what’s the next step? We understand that it’s much easier said than done to change your day-to-day workflow completely, but why not try to incorporate one of our tips each week and go from there. Test them out! Depending on your type of work, your work-from-home space, and your other day-to-day responsibilities, you might find a little change can have a big impact on your productivity.

Interested in learning more about our team, and how we can help your brand succeed? Drop us a note here. We’re always ready to chat!

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How to Use Retargeting Ads to Stand Out

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Retargeting ads are a powerful tool in your digital marketing toolbox. They allow you to interact with customers who are at different stages of your sales funnel, so your business stays top of mind. Think about different times you’ve seen a familiar ad while you’re browsing through the internet. That sense of familiarity makes you more likely to purchase that product or service.

This is great for all kinds of products and services, but particularly helpful for B2B sales, where customers often take weeks or even months to commit to a contract. With retargeting ads, you can segment your customers into different levels of interest, from people who have barely interacted with your brand to people who have been loyal customers.

The possibilities are endless! That’s why we’ve made these basic tips and tricks to make sure that your retargeting ads are effective.

retargeting ads

Set up your retargeting

This is the easy part. Every digital advertising platform has some form of trackable pixel that you can install into your website. This bridges the ad platform to your site, so that you can monitor how well the ads perform based on final conversions.

Whether you’re running Facebook, Google, Twitter, or whichever kind of digital ad, just check the back end for a simple html code to install into your website. Once the code is in, a whole world of tracking opens up! You can now segment your audience based on how they have interacted with your website. While the possibilities are endless, here are some examples you can start with:

  • People who have visited your website
  • People who have viewed specific products on your website
  • People who have purchased your products

Ideally, when someone lands on your website, you want them to go all the way to purchasing your product. However, we all know that most people take a little bit more convincing. Tracking your potential customers through these three different stages, allows you to tailor your messaging to nudge them onto the next step.

Figure out your customer journey

An effective campaign always comes back to understanding your customers! After clicking on your digital ad, they will enter the “consideration” stage of their customer journey. Often, this is the longest stage, because people spend time reading reviews, comparing competitors, or just wondering if they need the service at all.

Talk to your current customers and find out what they valued most while they were mulling it all over.

  • Price?
  • Features?
  • Variety?

Sometimes what you think is most important, doesn’t align exactly with what the market thinks is most important. This could be by design, but it never hurts to check in with your customer base.

Get strategic with several campaigns

Now that you’re all set up, you can get creative and strategic! Test out different messaging with your segments. Remember that with digital advertising, the algorithms pick the best performing ad to show, so doing 2-3 variations gives you the best chance of finding the winning combination of copy, image, and target audience.

Do you have any questions about retargeting? We’re happy to help! Contact us today, and set up a no-strings-attached consultation.

Facebook Ads

How to Create Facebook Ads that Drive Traffic to Your Site

by Blog

In 2021, relying on organic traffic is no longer an option. The on-going Google and Facebook updates make it difficult for your website to be discovered without the help of paid advertising. But don’t fret, this guide will help you create the best Facebook ads to solve that issue and generate the traffic your site deserves.

Facebook Ads

The Ad Creative

The first thing Facebook users see when they scroll on their feed is the image or video you use for your ad. It needs to be compelling enough that it will draw their attention and make them stop scrolling and read the copy of your ad. There are a few things to keep in mind when selecting your creative.

1) Use high-quality images

It might seem obvious, but all advertisers do not follow this simple rule. And depending on the resolution of your image, Facebook will limit the reach of your ad. Try to use images with a resolution of 1,200 x 1,200 pixels every time you create an ad.

2) Make fun images and videos

Make your ad stand out by creating designs using fun templates! Canva provides hundreds of templates that are certain to fit your brand and style. Check out our blog post “How to use Canva to stand out on social media” to get started!

Or use the templates provided by Vimeo to create dynamic videos that are sure to catch the attention of your audience.

3) Use limited text

Facebook penalizes advertisers who include too much text on their creatives by limiting the reach of their ads. Although they have started to ease the rule, it is good practice to limit the amount of text on your ads. Use words that will draw attention such as “20% off” or “on sale now” instead of “our products are on sales” for example. Make those keywords stand out by using bold colours and fonts!

The Ad Copy

Now that you caught the attention of your audience with an eye-catchy image or video, converting that attention to a click to your website will rely on a compelling ad copy. Follow these recommendations to craft high-converting copy:

1) Define your offer

The secret to high-converting Facebook ads is having a strong, compelling offer that differentiate your brand from your competitors and will entice your audience to click through.

Try a discount code unique to Facebook to help you track your return on investment for example.

2) Call out your audience

Studies suggest that starting your ad by calling out your audience can increase click-through rates by up to 13%. Try referring to your audience by specific keywords they can easily identify to.

For example, if you are targeting parents, start your ad copy with “Hey parents in Vancouver!”.

3) Determine a strong Call To Action

Your Facebook ads should ALWAYS contain a strong Call To Action. It will help your audience determine what the ad is about, what your offer is and what they get out of clicking your ad.

For example, if you are promoting a 15% off coupon, try a CTA like: “Get your coupon today” instead of “15% off all dresses”.

4) Split-test

When advertising on Facebook, it is important to test a few variations of ad copy and images in order to find out what resonates best with your target audience. What you think will work might not necessarily be true.

By split-testing between two to six ads using different wording, offers, CTAs and creatives, you will be able to determine what your audience is most receptive to. Allow a period of one week to test your different ads before turning off the least performing ads until one or two champions are left.

The Target Audience

You might have the most perfect copy and creative, if your targeting is not set correctly, you will end up wasting precious ad spend on a non-qualified audience that won’t convert into active customers.

It is important to know who your customers are BEFORE you start advertising on Facebook. The more you know about who they are and what they like, the higher the conversion rate. If you are starting from scratch, you can find out who your target persona is by looking at your Google Analytics account to know their interests, their age, their sex, or their location.

Once you have a good idea of who that persona is, simply set your Facebook ad targeting to match those findings. Set an age limit if needed, limit your ad reach by setting borders to the geographical area you want to target, and choose specific interests among the thousands of options available.

For example, if you are a middle school looking for more students, set the demographics to target people aged between 35 to 45, and choose some interests such as ‘parents’, ‘parents of kids aged 10 to 13’.

You can also use the Custom Audience tool available within your Facebook ad account to upload a list of current customers and create a lookalike audience of people who match similar demographics and interests as your list of customers.

Once your ad creative, copy and targeting are complete, you are ready to start advertising! The next step is to track the performance of your ads and the conversion rate. Check out our Beginners Guide: How to Track Conversions on Facebook blog post available here to learn how to track conversions and Return On Investment.

Still need help with Facebook ads? We can help you reach your target audience with unique and high-converting ads! Contact us at contact@curvecommunications.com.

Motion Social Posts (5)

How Authentic Case Studies Can Inspire Your Future Clients

by Blog

Case studies are an effective tool in nudging a considering lead into a future client. Think about ordering from a restaurant. Yelp has built a whole business on customers interested in scoping out the best and worst of their next meal. If people want to check if their $20 eggs benedict is worth it, you better believe your future clients want the same assurance when investing in a partnership with you.

The most basic of case studies has some context around a stellar existing client, a paragraph detailing your company’s great work, and then a fantastic result. That result doesn’t have to solve world hunger or eliminate every problem your client has, but it should be good enough for someone to think, “Hey, these guys know what they’re doing!”

Case Studies

All that great information is normally accented by imagery on your website. Some companies even go the extra mile and opt for video testimonials! However you choose to present your case studies, you have to remember that your goal is not to remind everyone how great you are. It’s to tell your customer that you understand their problems and are uniquely qualified to solve them.

Let’s walk through what to keep in mind when creating an inspiring case study.

Understanding Pain Points

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for anything, so it’s important to let your customers know that you understand their specific pain points. If you have a niche in your industry, then great! Case studies that talk about issues specific to your niche do wonders for boosting your credibility.

If you don’t have a niche, then you have to get specific another way: by pinpointing issues. Don’t just say “you need more leads.” Instead, take a step back and look for the real issue. The lack of leads is a result, so you need to write about the actual problem.

Remember, you are trying to prove your expertise. So detailing these specific pain points shows that you’ve got the know-how to figure out a problem that your customer may not even realize is there!

Establishing Your USP

A unique selling point (USP) is what keeps your customers coming back. This is something you are entirely in control of. No doubt your company provides a wide array of services, but when defining your USP for a case study, you want to ensure that the USP you focus on matches the pain points you identified in step one.

Here are some examples of USPs:

  • Are you faster than your competitors?
  • Do you offer cheaper price points?
  • Is there something particularly difficult to achieve that you provide?
  • Are your staff exemplary in a measurable way?
  • Do your products achieve measurable results?

Think about your customer, and try and figure out what would impress them the most.

Delivering on Results

Here’s what everyone’s looking for in a case study! This is the stat that normally gets pulled out for a graphic to share on social media or to run in an ad. The question every customer will ask after using your service or product:

What’s my return on investment?

Pick a result that is measurable. Whether it’s impressions on a digital ad or foot traffic to an event, just make sure that you have a nice big number to show your future clients what they could have if they worked with you.

The result you pick may not even be your highest or best one. Internally, your team may think that having the most eyes on an ad is the best measure of success, but you need to get into the mind of your customer. Do they care about that? Does it relate to their pain point?

As you can see, there is a LOT of work that goes into a case study, but trust us that hard work pays off. Try making one with these three thinking points in mind, and see the results for yourself!

Interested in hearing more about case studies, good content, and how to get more future clients? Book a call with us today!

Business Call

5 Ways to Make Your WFH Videos Great

by Blog

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.

Great video calls

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,

Ring lights for great video calls

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.

Not a great video call

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!

Create a Customer Avatar

5 Essential Tips to Creating Your Perfect Customer Avatar or Persona

by Blog

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.

Create a Customer Avatar

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!