I set up Creationz Marketing in 2013 to allow me to work with a range of businesses with a vast array of budgets and requirements. I had already at this point worked in-house for companies for 14 years and felt the time was right to branch out and steer my own ship as it were.
Was it that easy? Not really…when you first go from working in-house to running your own business there is a very steep learning curve to go through:
How do you run a business
How do you win and retain clients
What extra services do I need to be able to do – accounting, IT, insurances, etc
What support do I need when income is tight
Will clients want the services I offer?
Today, as I celebrate 8 years with the team, I am reflecting back over this time and can honestly say that it was a good decision and I have been very fortunate to work with amazing clients across the UK that have been able to see the transition and go on their journey with them. Some of our highlights include:
Moving into our new office in Beeston
Taking on my first employee in 2018 – now a team of 4!
Setting up an Internship Programme with Nottingham Trent University – we are 2 years into this programme
Running events in London, Dublin, Dubai, India & Germany, Vienna and more events planned.
Helping businesses to pivot in-person events to fully online during the pandemic
Speaking at client events on the power of marketing – in-person and online
Creating a network of people that support our business as we grow.
But you may be reading this and thinking that’s great but so what?
And you would be right! 8 years might not seem like a milestone birthday like 10, 15 or 20. To us, it is, especially after the year we have just experienced with Covid and the restrictions both we and our clients have faced and felt it is important that we all stop, take stock and celebrate the fact we are here helping our clients.
So, how has marketing changed over the past 8 years.
Marketing never truly sits still but the pace at which these changes are happening is helping us to shape our services to clients to ensure they are supporting their businesses in the right way and include:
Not Just Social Over the past 8 years, there has been a reliance on social media as the only marketing a business needs as it is free. Whilst this was the main benefit in the beginning, now businesses need more time, bigger budgets for ad spend, and much more to make social media their only source of marketing. We help businesses to systemize their marketing so that social media is a marketing pillar but NOT the only pillar.
Time to remove the invisibility cloak Over the past few years, it has become very apparent that businesses can no longer hide and rely on loyalty from existing clients. The speed of the internet, social media and choice had made that loyalty disappear. If we want something and cannot get it from our usual supplier, we look elsewhere. Just look at how many more orders were placed on Amazon over the past year when shops were closed. By helping businesses to be visible, but in the right way, it keeps that awareness and loyalty alive – even as circumstances change.
Direct Mail Has a Place As inboxes get fully, direct mail is becoming popular again – have a think about the post you receive, how much is now from your suppliers and clients. It is a great way of letting your customers know that you are thinking of them. It doesn’t have to be costly – a simple postcard or letter can make all the difference.In a world where we are connected online, could you give your clients something to take stock and think of you? We have lots of ideas and happy to have a chat.
Power of CRM One of the biggest areas for marketing at the minute is the power of your own database. Again with many businesses relying on social media, contacts are not taken online and into CRM system or even a simple excel spreadsheet. We help clients understand that putting all their eggs into social media channels can be dangerous as you don’t own the foundations you are building on. Could you still contact your vlients and contacts if social media shut down your account for a period of time? There are many cases in the news recently about Instagram Influencers who have had their accounts shut down overnight and have lost 100,000 followers etc. Do you have a plan to build a database?
Consistency – Not spreading yourself too thin With over 20 years of experience in marketing, one of the biggest changes is businesses no longer having a written marketing plan that helps shape the marketing efforts. Marketing is more ad-hoc, inconsistent, and following a scattergun approach. This can really impact where marketing time, effort, and budgets are spent. We are passionate about helping our clients to have a plan – it doesn’t have to be lengthy but by having a plan, you can see what works and what doesn’t and be a lot more consistent.
No Marketing Magpies Here Hands up, who has been swayed by the latest marketing tool or gadget? To be honest, most of us have. I can hold my hand up to this when I first set up the business, Chatbots were all the rage and I spent an afternoon setting it up to realise it was not right for us at that time. We help clients get really clear on what they want to achieve and put a plan in place so that it is harder to get swayed by something else. Over the last year, a lot of businesses had to pivot or they would have lost business and by being clear, we were able to help them pivot successfully by being clear and getting being marketing magpies.
Understanding and knowing your numbers We help businesses to understand their numbers, whether it is social media traffic, website traffic, budget spend it can all help. We were able to help a business fund a new website project by reviewing their marketing budget, reviewing where they were getting clients from, and showing them where they could make savings. They have always advertised in directories that didn’t generate any traffic or bring leads into the business – by understanding the numbers, they were able to get the new website they needed to make the business reflect current online conditions. Do you know your numbers? If not, let’s have coffee?
Get the help and support We have noticed over the past 8 years that businesses are seeing the benefit of outsourced marketing teams at their disposal. Sometimes someone outside the business can offer a different perspective. Having a team of experts on-call can actually save the business money than training and employing someone full-time. We have seen first-hand the power of how we can help clients, from as little as sending a monthly newsletter, right through to running full marketing campaigns. We become an extension to the businesses we work with, part of the team!
What does the future hold?
Whilst we are looking back over the past 8 years, we also have eyes on the future and we are so looking forward to what that future may bring. We are constantly reviewing and adapting our services, we have some big plans to support more businesses across the country to get the marketing support they need. Watch this space.
Our thanks go to Steve Edwards – Steve Edwards Photography for the fabulous images on this blog.
Winter has gone and Spring is here, with everyone dreaming about having some drinks in the garden with a BBQ. However, before any of that can happen there is that old tradition…Spring Cleaning. It’s time to do all those tedious tasks that you have been putting off all winter and get everything organised for the Summer ahead.
This goes the same for your marketing, you need to complete a whole review of your marketing strategy to check everything is spic and span before the summer arrives. Creationz Marketing is going to share a few things for you to go away and check before summer comes.
Check your Marketing Audit: This should be done across the whole board – Web and Print. Is your branding consistent across all platforms? Are you actively and regularly using social media? Is your printed marketing still in good condition? These are the sort of questions you need to begin to ask yourself to ensure that your business is ready for a strong summer.
Is social taking up your time? Having social media in your marketing strategy can often feel like you are juggling too many balls at once, and it becomes very hard to stay consistent across the board. If this is the case, there are scheduling tools that are available to you which allow you to schedule a week’s worth of content in just under an hour. Leaving you with plenty of free time to be social, liking, commenting and joining in the conversation.
Take the rubbish out: When building a business, it is common that you will come up with a number of different ideas of how to expand and grow. This often leads to a lot of great things; however, it can also lead to things that really don’t end up working. Start to look at these things and ask yourself is it working? Is it having the desired outcome that you had hoped? If not get rid of it, this can be hard to do as you have spent time on things, but it may be the case that your time could be better spent elsewhere.
Go Shopping: If your marketing strategy is outdated, incomplete or just lacking something intriguing then think about shopping around for some new designers or marketing specialists. Getting new marketing material made on a regular basis is crucial in an effective strategy as you need to stay fresh and new in the eyes of your audience. A marketing specialist can help with integrating a social media strategy, building a new website, creating a business blog, or doing a complete brand rework.
Tidy-up your website: It is no secret that sometimes we often neglect our websites, leaving it at the back of the queue of jobs to do. But if you let much-needed changes fall through the cracks, your website can easily collect dust and damage your brand. With all that has happened in the last year the chances are a lot of things that have changed within your business. It may be something has small as opening hours being different or a complete rebrand. Either way these changes need to be obvious throughout your website.
Organise your inbox: When you are a busy business owner things like emails, paperwork and other documents pile up. It is easy to become disorganised, emails stack up, and before you know if your inbox is a disaster. Use the Spring clean as an opportunity to purge into your inbox. Yes, it is a brain-numbing job and very time-consuming, but you’ll feel a lot more organised once the job is done.
Spring cleaning your marketing and workspace can make you feel refreshed and organized. Not only will your workplace look better, but you might also feel better, too. Creationz are always here to help with any questions or issues you may have! Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team.
It’s no surprise to see why video marketing is so popular these days – Firstly, it’s an extremely easy-to-digest format that gives our eyes a rest from the overabundance of textual posts we see on social media. This would explain why we reportedly watch a billion hours of YouTube a day (https://blog.youtube/press/). In 2020, 92% of marketers say that video is an important part of their marketing strategy. This has grown from 78% in 2015 (Smartinsights.com), showing that the importance of video is only growing and is therefore crucial in any effective marketing plan.
Here we will offer some tips and tricks for marketeers to create and share video, highlighting 5 reasons why video is so crucial.
Why Video?
Video format is much loved by the
majority of audiences as It is engaging and easy to digest, giving a real-life
idea of what is going on. With Marketeers loving it because you can portray
emotion leading to a higher level of interaction and in turn ROI – With
text/image posts it is often extremely hard to trigger any emotion in your
audience, which is why video marketing is fantastic. Video is also very
accessible to anyone with internet access, both to watch and to produce. While
there is certainly a trend towards higher quality video on a professional
level, anyone can hop onto their laptop and create their own video in under an
hour.
5 Stats that prove Marketeers
need Video
Search Engine Optimization
Search engines love video content due to the fact that they view them as high-quality content, using video content through various webpages can do wonders for your visibility on search engines – as long as the video is being optimised properly. This would mean incorporating the correct keywords and a good Meta description.
People
will spend 100 minutes a day watching online videos in 2021
As well as more
brands looking to utilize videos, consumers are now watching more videos than
ever before. It is estimated that the average person will spend 100
minutes every day watching online videos in 2021. This is a 19% increase compared to daily
viewing minutes in 2019, which stood at 84.
Informing and
Educating
97% of Marketeers say that video
content helps to educate customers on products/services
There is so much available choice now for products that customers no longer want to be bombarded with details and facts about the product. They want to know how it will benefit them, and video marketing allows an easy way of providing this to your audience. You can show the product being used by a number of different people. A great example of this was Spotify’s recent video advertisement, it doesn’t detail everything about Spotify and bore their audience. It explains exactly how Spotify personalizes your account for you, showing only the benefits to their audience:
Staying
competitive and relevant
81% of businesses now use video content (HubSpot). Videos are amazing for getting all sorts of messages out there, and if we think in terms of practicality, a short, unique explainer video can do a world of difference when it comes to educating people on the ins and outs of your particular product. By carefully planning out what your video will include you can easily catch and hold the attention of your audience.
Examples of Videos created by Creationz Marketing:
Boosted Engagement
Video generates 1200% more shares than both images and text – You can’t argue with stats like this, if you want engagement, Use video content! I personally feel this is the case, the majority of my time on social media is spent watching videos, especially since the revolution of short videos (Tik Tok, Instagram Reels). Whether that be people cooking, sport, or pretty much anything else, if it can catch my attention in the first 5 seconds then I am hooked.
Tips for creating your video…
There are a few reasons as to why you need to incorporate video content into your marketing plan, however, how do you begin to go about making your video? First of all, you need to figure out what is the correct video length for your platform:
Instagram: 30 seconds
Twitter: 45 seconds
Facebook: 1 minute
YouTube: 2 minutes
From here you need to begin to plan out exactly what it is you want your video to tell and create a storyboard explaining the flow your video will follow. A great piece of software to start with would be Canva, making it extremely easy to create high-quality professional videos, providing you with a number of templates.
We recently joined forces with Little Black Dog to help a local charity. Together we developed a new website for charity Safe and Sound, who raise awareness of child exploitation.
The charity supports children and young people across Derbyshire who are victims of or at risk of child exploitation. Including sexual exploitation, County Lines, Modern Slavery, trafficking, and radicalisation. Safe and Sound also supports the whole family and brings attention to the risks young people face.
The new website has lots of information and resources for professionals working with young people, parents, and young people themselves. It also has a live chat facility to enable easier access to the charity’s specialist support team.
What Safe and Sound had to say about the project:
Safe and Sound chief executive Tracy Harrison explained: “Our caseload increased by over 50% in 2020 largely since the start of the pandemic. Brought about by young people being socially isolated and therefore particularly vulnerable to online grooming.
It was, therefore, important to have a well-designed and user-friendly website. With a wealth of resources that can be easily accessed by professionals, families, and young people themselves. To raise awareness of the dangers facing young people in our local communities.
It has also given us a platform to better engage with individuals, businesses, organisations, and funders whose support is vital to enable us to work with children as young as seven and their families.
Child exploitation is not an easy subject to talk about and many young people and their families are actually not aware that they are being targeted by perpetrators – believing that so-called relationships are real.
The truth is that many relationships – particularly online – are far from healthy. Our message across social media channels throughout the past year has therefore been the importance of robust privacy settings.
We are extremely grateful to both Little Black Dog and Creationz for their support in developing this new website and look forward to continuing to work with them in the future.”
Why Creationz Marketing?
We are proud to provide ongoing digital marketing and social media support for Safe and Sound. Having achieved our initial goal of increasing engagement and raising greater awareness of child exploitation across Safe and Sound’s social media channels. We then identified the urgent need for a new website that would be capable of sharing important information and resources with stakeholders and the wider general public.
We then approached Helena at Little Black Dog to help the charity achieve its goal and we are thrilled with the results.
Marketing is an essential part of every business and plans and ideas constantly change. New ideas can take time to develop, cost time and money and that’s before there are any rewards. A Power Hour with our Marketing Team at the start of a project can really help to ensure you have all your ducks in a row and you understand what your new idea really needs.
At Creationz, we offer a range of Power Hours, these Power Hours are designed to focus entirely on your business to help create a plan to market your business effectively within your budget. If you are wanting to do your own marketing but need some advice and help, our Power Hours can guide you.
These Sessions are ideal for:
New Business Start-Ups
Business Owners looking to get clarity on their marketing activity
Businesses looking to change how they currently market
Business Owners looking to try a new form of marketing to work alongside existing efforts.
So how does a Power Hour work?
Once you book a Power Hour, we schedule time in the diary to work with you to help move your plans forward. We will ask you for the main focus you want to cover on the call so we can do some prep work for you.
On the call, you will discuss the project, and we will spend time to help you craft a marketing plan to ensure all bases are covered. We will then give you our advice and tips to ensure success. We will also put everything in writing so you have a working document. We will also give you a follow-up call a week after the Power Hour to see how you are getting on.
Power Hours can also help with:
Sense Checking
If you are looking to set up a new marketing activity a Power Hour can help sense check if it is right for your business.
We can help run through all the essentials and make sure everything is covered to assess the viability of the idea. We are all Marketing Magpies, by taking the time before you invest time, money, and effort, you can be sure you are spending effort in the right places.
Planning a new activity When planning a new activity, it is easy to fall down the trap of paying extra for things you may not need. We can help run through whether this marketing activity will be beneficial for your business and what its true costs/fees are. We help you break down the steps you need to take and what resources are required to ensure you are spending time and efforts in the right places to help your business.
Marketing Planning for the month A Power Hour can help you plan ahead. This is necessary as you have to always be one step forward! Once you have your month planned out, you’re not sitting around thinking of ideas on the day on what to do. Got all the ideas, but don’t know how to join them up? We can help link your marketing activities together! There is no point in writing a blog if no one is going to see it, but do you know how to correctly market it for more people to see it? We can give you a step-by-step process on how to link up your marketing together for your business.
Training in marketing Our Power Hour sessions will allow you to tap into over 20 Years of marketing experience working in a wealth of industries and includes both non-digital and digital expertise. Get the skills you and your team need to ensure your marketing is successful.
