Tag Archive for: Brand Awareness

company shirts
Lead Liaison

Company Shirts: Pros, Cons, & Tips

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My office just received an order of company t-shirts that we intend on giving away to current and prospective clients, as well as wearing ourselves. It’s not the first order, and it won’t be the last. But, it got me thinking. Company shirts are a pretty standard category of “swag.” And, rightfully so. They can be used for employees (in both B2B and B2C businesses), current clients, and even prospective clients. But really, are company shirts worth the investment?

The “Pros” of Investing in Company Shirts

A well-designed company shirt can be extremely versatile, but the end goal is to create brand awareness. There are several avenues of creating brand awareness. While much of marketing’s focus is on your prospective clients, brand awareness is also important for your current base of clients and even your employees. Everyone wants to be a part of something great. And a t-shirt is an easy way to make a statement – heck, it’s a walking billboard! Company shirts can create a sense of unity amongst your employees, make new clients feel like a part of a really cool family, and spark interest with your prospective client. The more your prospects see your brand in day-to-day life, the more they will trust your business.

Local screen printers are easy to find, and your choices for a designer is not limited to your area. Our designer lives more than 800 miles away from our screenprinter. We live in a modern world; we are not limited by the location of our partners and vendors. Find a designer that fits your company culture (if you don’t already have one on staff), then choose your screen printer based on the quality of shirts they have available in addition to their reputation. And if you prefer to do everything online, companies like UberPrints.com allow you to design your own t-shirts in their online studio. They also offer free shipping (bonus!). We have lots of experience with thier work, and it’s great quality.

Company shirts, or marketing shirts specifically, can make you money. I love this article by Sujan Patel, in which he explains how giving away t-shirts made him over $500k in revenue. Patel says, “I posted to Facebook to see who wanted a few shirts and was surprised when I ran out just a few hours after I put up the message. Clearly, there was a demand for my shirts! Since my supply was short, I put together an email list of people who were interested and started sending out the shirts with personalized notes. Not only did this allow me to help capture people’s physical addresses for use in future t-shirt giveaways, my friends were so excited that they personally thanked me on Facebook and started wearing the shirts around town.” He goes on to explain how giving away all of those shirts made him money. The project helped him strike up business conversations, it helped him get into larger companies, and it helped him grow his brand recognition.

The “Cons” of Investing in Company Shirts

“Logo shirts” are typically the first to go in a closet purge (unless the quality of the shirt warrants keeping). If you’re going to do this project, you need to make sure you do it right. A high quality t-shirt and a modern, simple design will be the keys to keeping your shirts in rotation.

Predicting the future is hard. How do you determine how many of each size you’ll need? I’ll tell ya – this is probably one of the hardest parts of the t-shirt buying process. It’s hard to straddle the line between staying within budget, but also having enough shirts to cover your potential need. And, if you are buying t-shirts without the wearers in mind (like your employees), it’s impossible to know what size you need. My best advice is to hop on a LinkedIn group in your industry and ask. Also, go ahead and mentally prepare for the fact that your numbers will be slightly off. That’s okay! You can always order more.

Tracking ROI is hard. It’s difficult to quantify the return on investment to expect for each shirt you give away. RealThread.com helps quantify that. “According to the Ad Speciality Institute, the average giveaway t-shirt gets worn 4.32 times per month and earns 365 impressions per month, with an impression being any time the shirt is viewed or seen. Assuming that your t-shirt is kept for even just one year, that’s 4,380 impressions per t-shirt.” So, if your t-shirt cost is $9.00/shirt, your cost per impression would be $.002/impression. Not bad.

Tips

Sizing

Sizing will always be an issue, as I stated before. But it’s important to make an educated guess. The most common t-shirt size for adults is a Large. But this will vary based on your percentage of men vs women. It’s also a good idea to skew the sizes slightly to the bigger size, since it’s easier to fit someone in a larger shirt than it is to fit in a shirt that’s too small. This Quora article provides this simple ratio:

  • Small: 1
  • Medium: 2
  • Large: 2
  • XL: 1
  • 2XL: .5

Design

Keep your design simple and do NOT skimp on quality. You want to appeal to a wide audience with your design, so the more simple the better. This guide from Bonfire gives even more tips and tricks to designing the perfect shirt. Try to keep the sales-y stuff out of your design. It’s 2018 – people know how to search for your business online. They don’t need your logo and your URL and your phone number on their clothing. That’s all too distracting. Remember, your main goal is to create unity and brand awareness. The rest will come.

You want people to be more inclined to actually wear your shirt, rather than wash their car with it. A cotton-polyester blend is pretty common and probably most suitable for everyday use. The cotton fiber makes it easy to care for and clean, while the polyester increases wrinkle resistance. And don’t forget to ask your t-shirt vendor for a sample. Most will decline, but if you call and ask, you might get special treatment. Remind them that it’s better to send a sample, than re-print an entire order because the t-shirt is unsatisfactory. Once you have the sample, wear, wash, and re-wear the shirt. Keep an eye on how much/if it shrinks

Ideas for how to use your company shirts:

  • Lead Generation
    • Offer a free shirt online, in exchange for contact information.
    • Give away a t-shirt as a reward for signing up for a webinar.
    • Use t-shirts to incentivize prospects to fill out a survey or quiz.
  • For Current Clients
    • Use company shirts to keep your brand in the mind of your best customers at all times (they are your biggest advocates, after all!).
    • Make a limited run of shirts that are only given to VICs (Very Important Clients).
    • Give away a t-shirt as a reward for a client completing an educational course on a subject in your industry. For example, we offer free educational courses on our software. We could give a t-shirt as a reward for completing a set of software training courses.
  • For Employees
    • Use company shirts to unite a team in vision.
    • Use company shirts to celebrate an important anniversary or other company milestone.
    • Give your employees a company shirt so that they can rep your brand outside of work.
    • [B2B] Use different color t-shirts to help employees easily recognize team members (the technology department wears blue, the finance department wears green, interns wear orange, etc.).
    • [B2C] Improve customer satisfaction by making it easy for customers to spot the nearest employee to assist them, thus improving their overall experience.
    • Take a group photo of all of your employees wearing the same shirt. This image can be used on your “Meet the Team” webpage, and will help prospective clients feel comfortable knowing that your company is truly a “team.”

An Extra Tip (…and Shameless Plug)

Marketing t-shirts can also be incorporated in your lead nurturing if your company uses marketing automation. Lead Liaison’s Lead Management Automation (LMA)™ solution allows for direct mail actions to be included in any drip campaign (aka: an automation). This includes the functionality to send marketing material (like t-shirts, company pens, etc.) automatically to key Prospects (let’s say, with a lead score above 900). To learn more about this and any of the other amazing capabilities of Lead Liaison, request a demo here.

Lead Liaison

How to Get Through the Gatekeeper & Raise Brand Awareness Using Marketing Automation

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envelope-1803662_1920Sometimes the easiest way to not only get through the gatekeeper, but to get your prospect’s attention is to deliver the “WOW” factor. See, most gatekeepers see the same emails. They get the same phone calls. You are just one of many, and most are boring.

If you were in their position, what would happen if you received something super personal? Well, I can tell you that almost every FedEx package is opened. Likewise, hand-written notes also receive special attention. They show the recipient that the sender has taken a specific interest and investment in making a contact. When Lead Liaison added the ability to send hand-written notes, many of our clients began to report instant success in reaching audiences that previously ignored them. Success rates went through the roof where competitive environments existed.

Think about it: “Thank you” emails have become so ubiquitous that many people have stopped sending them all together. However, a physical note sits on a desk for hours…days…even weeks! It makes a physical impression, and raises brand awareness, which leads to the one thing you need most in your sale: trust. They’re thinking, “Hey, it’s a real person that cares about my business!”

Unfortunately, legacy Marketing Automation platforms think in solely digital terms and have become email dinosaurs. If you are not already thinking outside of email with your automation strategy, I would highly encourage you to look at an advanced system like Lead Liaison in order to grow some ideas on how you can improve your sell-through rates.

Read more about Lead Liaison’s Handwritten Letter feature here. Request a personal, one-on-one demonstration of this feature and many others here.

Lead Liaison

Social Media and Brand Awareness

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Social MediaThere isn’t just one key to success for a company, no matter the size. Success is usually a product of persistence, best practices, and even a little (or a lot of) luck. One very important key to success is creating brand awareness. We’ve talked about brand awareness several times on the Lead Liaison blog, but today we’ll be talking about the relationship between social media and brand awareness.

An Argument for Social Media for B2B Companies

I’m sure I don’t need to go into why brand awareness is essential for any company, especially a small-to-medium sized company. When another business has a need that pertains to your line of work, you want that company to think of you immediately. Brand awareness is the result of nurturing and education, both of which can be done via social media in small, easy-to-consume spoonfulls.

Why should B2B companies use social media to promote brand awareness? Example: in my off time, I occasionally (okay – more than occasionally) scroll social media. Even though I’m not “on the clock”, I’m still thinking about to-do lists, and I am aware of what I am consuming. I’ve usually got an even clearer head because I’m in more of a relaxed state of mind. When I see advertisements for tools that I could use at work, it doesn’t make me cringe. It makes me think. During the workday, I’m so busy with tasks and emails that I rarely stop what I’m doing to assess the situation and see if I could be doing anything better or more efficiently. That’s not good – but it’s fact.

What Should Be Different About a B2B Company’s Social Media Efforts?

As with most B2B marketing, it’s more about education than hard selling. Remember, the goal with your social media is brand awareness – not immediate sales. You want to help businesses learn to trust your company’s name as a resource. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be the first company that comes to mind when their need comes to fruition. Because of this, your social media marketing should not focus on selling, but rather on education. Share best practices, tips & tricks, or links to informative articles (yours or others’).

Where Should You Focus?

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are some of the most active social media sites. However, LinkedIn Groups can be extremely effective for B2B social media marketing, as well as a YouTube channel. As an introvert, I much prefer to skim YouTube videos about a software that I’m interested in purchasing, rather than speak to a salesperson on the phone.

But, it’s not necessarily where you focus your social media efforts. It’s more about how you communicate. A recent study from The MarketingProfs, The State of Social Media Marketing, shows that B2C and B2B social media marketers are mostly using the same social media approach, in terms of which platforms they utilize. The differences instead lie in how social media is used, not which social media are used.

In social media, small companies can act like big ones. Sure, there are paid advertising options for most social media sites. However, the reach is essentially the same, depending on the amount of followers a company has. Because of this, we see that social media activity does not vary much between large and small companies.

Social Media for Brand Awareness

The message is simple. B2B companies should use social media to help educate and nurture members of the marketplace. If done properly, that brand awareness will lead to increased trust, which leads to increased sales. This is a modern strategy for communicating with your potential clients, and it’s time to get on board!

Interested in how Lead Liaison helps you manage your social media presence? Contact a representative today for a free demonstration!

Lead Liaison

How Does Digital Marketing Impact Your Ability to Build Your Brand Awareness?

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digital marketingDigital marketing has leveled the playing field for companies of any size to build awareness.  Unfortunately, it has created some unique challenges as well.  Whereas an established brand may have carried value for years (or even decades) with traditional media; brands may become stale or erode in a matter of months in the new media environment.

Taking a quick SWAT analysis of branding in a digital environment, we can quickly identify the following opportunities and challenges:

Strengths of Digital Marketing:  There’s a low cost/ease of entry. And, you have the ability to reach the world in one “market.”

Weakness: Your competition can create a lot of noise. New entrants can continually challenge your brand position.

Opportunity: A sustained/successful approach to digital branding will generate an influx of qualified leads. Converting such leads should cost a fraction of the cost of traditional media, and traditional sales efforts. The world can become your marketplace!

Threat:  If your competitor has a head start on you, it’s hard to catch up to their brand.  The greater their lead, the harder it is to overtake their position. Many companies have solutions that can out-compete their competition at every level, but lose opportunities because of their failure to win the branding war.

So What is the Solution?

Each solution is going to be unique to the company that is being advised.  What we do know is that nearly 100% of all purchases over $100 will result in some sort of online investigation by the decision maker and influencers.  As such, it is important to build your brand with a balanced approach of attraction (ex: PPC/SEO, retargeting, proactive outreach, etc), listening (visitor tracking, data intelligence, surveys, etc),  relevant communications/education (targeted email, direct mail, videos, etc), and execution (sales calls, relevant calls to action) and remarketing (effectively supporting and upselling to your existing list of fans and customers).

If you are interested in learning more about how you could build your brand,  Lead Liaison is currently offering a free brand analysis to all interested parties.  Simply click here to talk to someone about our process and to enroll in the program.

 

Lead Liaison

Building a Brand Strategy

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Do Not SurrenderFive or six years ago, John’s company was already spending money on things like SEO/PPC/Adwords and other affiliate programs to drive people to his website. The website was beautiful, informative and ahead of it’s time.  The results however, were abysmal.  The company had failed to develop a strong brand message and image.

Then something changed.  The company started to develop relationships through on-going content that consistently told a story, tone, and image.  People started to equate their messaging as the gold standard in the industry. Within a couple of years, people would call John and feel honored just to be able to talk with him.  Just a couple years before, these same people wouldn’t even call him back! So, what changed? Simple: He applied a brand that others were aware of, trusted, and would be top of mind when a need arose.

Oftentimes, companies assume that they are not ready to use marketing automation or brand strategy until they fix their website, improve their traffic issues, or develop an SEO /PPC/Adwords/Retargeting strategy. The reality is that your company cannot afford to wait a single day when it comes to building your brand reputation.  Each day that you wait is a day in which you raise the white flag of surrender to your competitors in the battle for the mindshare of your prospects.

Remember this:  You can have an effective marketing automation/branding approach without a website… but you can’t have an effective website without a successful and sustainable branding message.

Interested in learning more about how you can build a brand strategy with marketing automation?

Get a Demo

 

 

Lead Liaison

Consumer Engagement is Key to Brand Success

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Consumer Engagement is Brand SuccessConsumers aren’t just looking for you to hold their hand throughout the transaction process – they are looking for consumer engagement, the core concept in making trusted transactions happen for your business. Keeping consumers engaged is all about providing them with an experience that they can find informative and trustworthy. That experience should also hold their attention.

The right marketing automation software can help you measure engagement, but unless you have a solid consumer engagement strategy for your brand on the whole, automation isn’t going to give back the kind of helpful data you’re looking for. It’s important to incorporate marketing automation into your overall strategy. The automation itself is not meant to serve as a standalone strategy.

Understanding Consumer Engagement

The first step to engagement is to understand the various methods consumers use to engage. Social media is a big one – you’ll want to target areas on the web where consumers are spending a great amount of passive time. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are easily available via desktop or mobile, allowing you the ability to engage with consumers no matter where they – or you – are. Social media also presents ease of engagement, with the ability to chat so quickly back and forth that the flexibility and power of a chat room can be utilized.

The same holds true for blogs and forums. Even if you’re not engaging directly, you can create contextual ads that give customers the opportunity to find out about you and engage with you in other ways. The Google Adwords Display program is a good example of this. Adwords Display places your ad on relevant blogs and news sites. Customers can engage with you via a text, graphic or video ad.

Tracking Consumer Engagement

Once you have an engagement strategy in place, it’s important to let your marketing automation company do the monitoring, then interpret your data. For instance, you may want to measure social media engagement over time based on what time you’re posting. Your marketing automation service can give you an idea as to what the profile is of your average user, what time Tweets or Facebook posts are most effective and how users are getting to your website based on your social profiles.

Because this is sensitive data that can be critical to your company’s marketing strategy, it’s important to select a marketing automation partner with the right tools – a company with your best interests in mind. Lead Liaison helps businesses stay in line with success through marketing automation tools that work for businesses of all sizes. Visit us at Lead Liaison.com to find out more!