LionShark Digital Marketing Blog

Does Your B2C Company Measure Up to Our Preschool?

11/2/2020

Imagine your favorite store, your favorite restaurant, and your favorite tech brand. Now combine them. That’s how I feel about our son’s preschool. I absolutely love it. I can’t express enough how much I adore the school and the teachers and the curriculum. No matter what the day or week has been like, I still get excited about taking him to school. Then after I drop him off, I eagerly anticipate what he’s going to tell me about his day. And I get all giddy when I think about my daughter going there next year as well.

And while I certainly get the warm fuzzies as a Mama when I think about my oldest kiddo learning and making friends, the marketer in me also understands that this preschool is absolutely killing it from a business perspective. So, what can your company learn about consumer satisfaction, staffing, and product offerings from a preschool? Let’s dive in!

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Finding Your Brand Voice

2/4/2020

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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.

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8 Reasons Your Logo is Terrible

3/9/2017

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Small businesses are notorious for having crummy logos, but they’re not the only violators. There are plenty of businesses out there of all sizes that have logos that are blasé at best and cringe-worthy at worst. Wondering if your business logo makes the grade? Take a good look at your logo and ask yourself if it meets any of these criteria for a sub-par logo:

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How to Tell Your Brand Story

2/21/2017

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Whether your business has been around for generations or is green and new, it has a brand story to tell. That story, which is uniquely your own, is the heart and soul of your company… and it’s really important! It’s what piques consumers’ interest, compels them to buy, and makes them into loyal customers. That’s why it’s so crucial to tell your brand story well.

Your brand story should be documented on your About Us page and come to life through all your customer touch points. But simply providing key information like when your business was started, who the owner is, and what you do/sell isn’t enough. You absolutely must captivate consumers by weaving a brand story that’s engaging and exciting. Here’s how you do just that:

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Building Your Brand on Respect

9/8/2016

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I’m not really sure what happened to respect, but it seems to have taken a serious hit in recent years. I remember a time when you could trust that the people and brands around you would respect you as a person. There were understood rules of engagement and standards to live up to, that constituted a sort of social contract. Breaking this contract had real consequences because people would cut ties with acquaintances or businesses that they felt were disrespectful in any way.

But as the internet has continued to grow into the behemoth that it is these days, we seem to have lost that face-to-face connection that respect is built on. Just look at the types of comments you see on online forums and articles or the way some businesses react to critical reviews – these definitely aren’t the types of civilized things that would be said to someone in person!

More and more it feels like people aren’t neighborly and friendly as they used to be and brands tend to be out to make the quick buck and move on. Essentially, we’ve created a society where people feel forced into independence because they can’t trust that the social fabric around them will respect them as people so they have to look out for themselves. It’s pretty unfortunate from an anthropological perspective, but it also provides a real opportunity for businesses to gain a competitive advantage by restoring the respect that seems to have been mostly lost. So as a business, how do you climb the mountain of consumer perception to restore respect? If you want to attract and retain customers, you have to respect them in the following ways:

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Does Your B2C Company Measure Up to Our Preschool?

Finding Your Brand Voice

8 Reasons Your Logo is Terrible

How to Tell Your Brand Story

Building Your Brand on Respect

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