LionShark Digital Marketing Blog

Finding Your Brand Voice

2/4/2020

The beginning of the year is the most popular time to start a business. People often think about their personal and professional goals for the coming year and decide to launch that new venture that they’ve been thinking about starting. If you’ve recently started a new business, or plan to in the coming months, you certainly have a lot to get done. Filing new business documentation, creating inventory, developing a marketing plan, looking for a location to rent, hiring staff, finding business software to streamline operations – these startup activities require substantial time and effort. However, during these essential early steps most entrepreneurs forget a crucial branding activity – determining a brand voice.

Every business has a brand voice, but not all businesses have intentionally chosen theirs.

In the beginning, many new businesses start with the owner’s voice as the brand voice. However, as more employees are added, or content is outsourced to a digital marketing company, it becomes much more difficult to keep a consistent voice if there are no parameters to guide communications across customer touchpoints.

Businesses that take steps like creating a website, setting up social media profiles, running ads, and sending invoices without regard to the overall voice that they’re using typically end up with a piecemeal brand voice. Without being deliberate a brand voice will lack direction and cohesion, weakening the brand and constricting business growth.

Some business owners may feel that specifying brand voice is unnecessary, but most often the limiting factor is time and effort. Business owners are typically intimidated by the concept of creating a brand voice, causing it to get deprioritized behind time-sensitive tasks that directly generate revenue. However, the process does not need to be difficult.

Get the ball rolling by simply asking, “If our brand was a person, who would that person be? What would that person sound like, say, ask, and tell you? Where would that person live, work, visit, and spend time? What would that person do for fun?” These questions (and any others you can think of) help to personify the brand, allowing a way to match the brand voice with the business’s market positioning to maximize revenue.

What is Content Marketing?

1/14/2020

Content marketing is:
A strategic marketing approach based around creating valuable and engaging content for your target audience to drive profitability and create brand value.

Let’s break that definition down.

While all marketing should be strategic, far too many business owners (especially small business owners) are still using shotgun marketing approaches. They may buy advertising space in printed publications, fill radio spots, or run TV commercials in the hopes that wider general exposure will drive revenue. The assumption is that simply providing more ways for people to hear about a company increases brand recognition, ultimately increasing revenue. And while this may work in some instances, it is not a very strategic approach. Content marketing is a strategic marketing tactic that defines a clear target demographic before pursuing that audience with customized content.

Content is tailored for a specific target audience to go after their needs, desires, and aspirational goals. By creating true value and engaging audiences, brands form a lasting connection that spurs purchase activity and fosters a loyal following.

In this definition content can be articles, blog posts, videos, white papers, case studies, social media posts, or anything else developed by the business to connect with consumers. In fact, content doesn’t simply involve online materials. Content more broadly encompasses offline items like product packaging, tradeshow materials, and point-of-sale displays as well.

Find out what you need to know about content marketing to succeed with this highly lucrative marketing approach!

Content Predictions for 2020

12/18/2019

The holidays are filled with marketers making predictions for the new year. We can’t help ourselves, we’re like months to a flame. Maybe it’s the thrill of realizing you were right or the unquenchable urge to help businesses improve their strategic marketing planning, but marketers love their trend predictions. Seeing these posts crop up during December and January are as predictable as Santa riding in on his sleigh.

Here are our predictions for the coming year:

Content That Changes Paradigms

12/3/2019

As a digital marketer and content strategist I routinely write optimized content for clients across many different industries. While they all have their own challenges, quirks, joys, and triumphs, one stands out among the crowd.

Yes, I have a favorite client. I said it. The cat’s out of the bag.

This client isn’t my favorite because he’s zany or insightful or kind (although he is all those things). I like working with this client because doing work for him feels more like a collaboration than a job.

When we first started working together though, he kind of terrified me.

The Ultimate Guide to Charitable Marketing

11/12/2019

If you support any charitable organizations, get ready for your inbox to start growing. ‘Tis the season!

While for-profit companies began ramping up their email marketing efforts in early October to notify shoppers of upcoming promotions and seasonal releases, charities will be following suit in the coming weeks. Thanksgiving unofficially kicks off the charitable giving busy season that runs through Christmas and into year-end.

The message that charities will be overwhelmingly promoting is that in this season of gift giving, there is no greater gift than to give to those in need. Broadly speaking, this encompasses every charitable marketing campaign whether the goal is to increase cash contributions, volunteer hours, public displays of support, or in-kind donations.

So, what do marketers working with charitable organizations need to know this holiday season?

Is Associative Marketing Just Hype?

10/17/2019

As a marketer I’ve always been fascinated with the ways that brands appeal to consumers and influence purchase patterns. Subsequently, I tend to notice strategic marketing approaches more than the average person.

While there will never be a one-size-fits-all marketing approach, I’ve noticed some emerging trends in my years as a digital marketer. Lifestyle marketing, cause-based marketing, and self-improvement marketing have all seen a dramatic rise to popularity in my time. Over the last few years though there has been a huge uptick in what I call “associative marketing.”

What is Associative Marketing?
Simply put, associative marketing is selling to people like you.

This is a widely used (and wildly successful) tactic among minority groups and marginalized consumer segments. Associative marketing can be based on any characteristic but is most common among sexes/genders/sexual identities, races/ethnicities/nationalities, and religions/beliefs.

The Evergreen Content Bible

9/19/2019

You’ve probably heard of evergreen content before. It’s the kind of content that always stays relevant, making it highly indexable by search engines and endlessly appealing to readers. In short, it’s a content marketer’s dream come true.

Evergreen content is considered the holy grail of content creation because its sustained web popularity continues to provide business value long after it’s been published. A lot has been written about evergreen content – why evergreen content is a must-have, how to start creating evergreen content, and which types of content are considered evergreen.

But with the evergreen craze in full effect, most businesses don’t stop and ask themselves whether their content should be evergreen.

Are there times when content shouldn’t stand the test of time? Is a strong viral surge more lucrative than continued interest? Can content with a limited shelf-life demonstrate more authority or strengthen brand positioning better?

How to Build a Business When You’re Busy

9/3/2019

It’s no secret that I’ve taken a fairly lengthy hiatus from writing for this blog. Fortunately, that 7-month break was due to being busy with client work, and not some sort of disaster or tragedy. Regardless of the reason, however, it was an unacceptable radio silence that I’m going to try my best not to repeat.

So, how did I get to this point? And what did I learn in the process?

Five years ago, I started this business and I forced myself to adhere to a rigid publishing schedule. I wrote a ton of articles that I thought were helpful and actionable. However, what I found was that only a few articles were bringing in traffic and leads. An extremely demanding content schedule was killing me and, according to the data, it wasn’t even fruitful work.

So, two years ago I decided to relax my expectations. Instead of posting 1-2 times a week, I aimed to post 1-2 times a month. I reasoned that by writing less, I would avoid the writing fatigue I was experiencing and also be able to spend more time on each article to produce better quality content in the process. Win-win!

This strategy was going well until earlier this year, when I just stopped. At least that’s what it looked like from a reader’s perspective.

How to Love Writing About Boring Topics

2/22/2019

As a content marketer and experienced copywriter, I write about a lot of topics that are not particularly glamorous. For instance, in the last few months I’ve written about accounting, manufacturing, and toilets. When clients request articles on these types of “boring” subjects, I find it’s easy to get bogged down during the research phase and struggle with motivating myself to start writing. At times, it can also be challenging to stay focused once I’ve gotten started to craft something that will provide value for readers. In those instances, I use these tips:

How Much Does Your Content Cost?

10/9/2018

As a content marketer and professional copywriter, I work with business owners and other marketers every day that see the value in outsourcing content creation. These shrewd businesspeople understand that hiring a professional can save their time, sanity, and most of all budget.

But for every one of these clients, I have countless more that have turned down proposals due to cost. While this is routine, especially when working with budget-restricted small businesses, it still surprises me. The irony is that while smaller companies and teams should be even more discerning with how they spend their time, they tend to simply have a knee jerk reaction to spending money – opting to do things in-house that make more sense financially to hire out.

Balking at the cost of a quote without taking the time to do a thorough price comparison is never a wise decision. So, let’s take the time to look at how much your content actually costs.

Quoted Price
Some copywriters will just give you a total price for the project without any mention of how long it is expected to take or how many revisions are covered, but others will break down the cost on an hourly basis. Always try to find out how long the copywriter is budgeting for the project so that you can perform an accurate cost analysis comparison.

Let’s say you get a proposal to have a piece of content written by a freelance content marketer. The quoted cost is 4 hours of work for a price of $160 ($40/hr).

How much will it cost for your team (or yourself) to produce the same content?

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