Strategy Archives » BLCK BRND

Time To Up Your Takeaway/Delivery Service

At the moment, under COVID restrictions, many retail and restaurant companies are looking into food delivery either as their new primary or sole source of income. It makes sense, especially under social distancing restrictions and government lockdown, Version 2.0, Level Whatever.

However, there’s a few things you’ll need to consider if you’re going to find success in a very competitive market. In this article, we’ll outline a few of the things you’ll need to not just facilitate food deliveries, but to establish a customer-base among a captive audience and make a return on your investment.

Taking Orders

Processing a takeaway order isn’t as simple as it used to be. Gone are the days when you just needed a phone line, a pen, and some paper – companies like Just Eat and Deliveroo have normalised online booking, raising the standards and leaving telephone-only restaurants behind. Getting on Deliveroo, Just Eat, Uber Eats and so on is an obvious choice. Not only is this the preferred method of purchase for many customers, but it exposes you to new customers who might be browsing for a new experience, rather than looking for their already-established local.

However, taking orders through your website is another underused and undervalued option. Firstly, these third-party delivery apps can take a significant cut of your sale, anywhere from 20-30%. This is a significant cost, especially in an industry where margins are already fine. Taking orders directly means you can avoid these fees entirely. The benefits don’t stop there though.

Having an ordering system on your site also makes things as easy as possible for customers who might have Googled your business for more information or to see your menu, creating a smooth and effective sales funnel. There are a lot of options from third-party plugins to custom-coded solutions. Our web development team will listen to your exact needs and budget, and suggest a solution which is perfectly tailored for your business.

Getting the Word Out There

Whether you’re a new business or established and offering a new service, letting customers know you’re delivering is vital to success. Luckily, there are lots of effective ways to do so:

Print

Although the internet has changed the food delivery industry, print still has a fundamental place. Printing off menus and posting them through the doors of every home in your service area remains effective. Plus, because of the way print prices scale, getting 5000 menus or leaflets doesn’t cost much more than getting 100!

Social Media

As with all modern business, social media will play a fundamental role in your marketing plan. Through targeted advertising, you can make sure you pop up on the newsfeeds of everyone in your service area, without wasting money on those outside of it. Furthermore, once you’ve built an audience of established customers and would-be customers, you can post pictures of all your most tempting dishes and deals to make sure there’s only one place they are going for their Friday night meal. Social media for restaurants and takeaways is more simple than most industries in terms of getting attractive content, but it’s also incredibly competitive. Make sure your campaign is in the right hands to ensure a return on investment and speak to our digital marketing team today.

Email

Email marketing is only an effective option for established companies who have built up an email database, but if you’re a new company it’s something you should start working on straight away. Getting an email into the inbox of a customer at the right time will make sure you’re the chosen destination for their weekend order – especially if you attach an offer they can’t refuse!

Brand Your Niche

If you live in a fairly urban area and search for nearby takeaways, you’re going to find countless options. Another issue is that a customer will typically find one that they can rely on and stop trying elsewhere. The question is, how do you make sure they pick you? It’s all about finding your niche. Of course, you may be providing a type of food that doesn’t have a lot of direct like-for-like competition, but you’re still just one place in a sea of other restaurants and food providers.

Other than word-of-mouth, branding is the only thing that will set you apart from competitors. Let’s face it, the majority of takeaway branding hasn’t changed since the 1980s, and it’s a great time to be offering a modernised, sleek, and up-to-date option for customers looking for something that bit more special. Your logo, design, printed materials, website, social media content, and anything else with your name on it is what will set you apart from the competition – our designers have helped a number of food and drink brands, from producers to the service industry, to stand out. Speak to us today about how we can help your restaurant to shine.

There Has Never Been a Better Time!

The vast majority of businesses have suffered severely during recent disruption, but takeaway and food delivery services have thrived. Now is the time to invest in marketing to make sure your business doesn’t just survive, but thrives during lockdown. It’s up to you to organise your kitchen and drivers for a smooth service, but BLCK BRND will take care of the marketing giving you one less thing to worry about. Get in touch and let’s have a chat – there are enough customers out there, and we’ll make sure they find you.

Think Link(edIn)

In 2020 LinkedIn has over 660 million members and 675 million monthly users. These statistics are impressive, but what is more impressive is that LinkedIn Ireland redirects almost four times more users to companies’ homepages than any other social network.

It is a B2B goldmine and yet still many businesses do not use it to their advantage. Here is why BLCK BRND is embracing the platform as we emerge from lockdown and why you should be using it to achieve your digital marketing goals.

LinkedIn Explained

LinkedIn has been established as a popular B2B networking channel for some time. It attracts B2B marketers because of its professional focus and tailored audience. It is unrivalled when it comes to industry connections, which is why it is the perfect asset for any business. LinkedIn’s true value lies in its ability to give businesses the option to join specific groups with certain characteristics so that they can connect with prospective clients or customers. Through a simple search, businesses can gather a list of possible groups and leads to connect with. In essence LinkedIn enables businesses to connect with the people that matter without having to sift through hundreds of connections. It can help your business reach its goals, whatever they may be.

Grow Your Reach

Success and growth for any business relies on a loyal customer base and a potential customer base. Luckily LinkedIn can help with both. Businesses can raise and develop their brand awareness through content, customer interaction and company updates while utilising the advanced search feature to identify their target audience. To be successful on LinkedIn you need a consistent output of high quality content and an efficient sales pipeline. It is important to note however that posting on LinkedIn is not the same as it is on all other social media. Native LinkedIn content should be shorter and easier to understand than blogs but longer and more specific than that of Facebook or Twitter. ‘Microblogs’ are a great way of attracting your target audience while providing value and insight to your existing connections. A social marketing agency can help you find the tone of voice that is right for your business. At BLCK BRND we build and shape the brand’s social media presence in line with their ambitions. Our talented team of designers, developers and marketers can deliver content to help position your company and connect with your audience.

Promote Your Business

LinkedIn has numerous features to help businesses find their ideal customers. With references, targeted searches, network suggestions, sales alerts and chatbots readily available (and new features being added every day) everything you need to grow and refine your audience is at your fingertips. A company page can be your greatest marketing tool, use it to promote your brand’s core values, improve the visibility of job opportunities, nurture leads and celebrate your customers. It is the community that you build on LinkedIn that will be the key to your success. Business owners, employees, customers and job candidates make up your community, so engage with them. Drive growth through meaningful conversations and appropriate hashtags. Interact with customers and other industry professionals for quicker growth and reach.

Become a ‘Thought Leader’

Creating and publishing rich content that is of value to your customers and industry will help you become a ‘thought leader.’ Sharing the knowledge you have gained over the years can lend credibility to your brand, help with brand recall and drive people to your website. LinkedIn doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it should play a part of a wider digital marketing approach, so take inspiration from your website, blogs and daily life to curate posts that educate, inspire or influence your audience. Everything you do on social media contributes towards a perception. If you know what you want to be known for, you can use this strength to your advantage- shaping your actions and communications to point towards the desired interpretation.

Talk To BLCK BRND

As social media experts we can help you influence what your customers think, feel and talk about and they’ll act and respond to your business. We offer a wide range of social media services tailored to your unique business requirements. For help growing or refining your social media presence get in touch today.

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As Lockdown Lingers…

The COVID-19 outbreak has been the toughest challenge most organisations will have ever faced. With no clear end in sight, many are wondering how they can preserve their business in the long term.

In times of uncertainty, it’s important that you make a plan to secure not only the health of your staff and customers but also that of your brand as well. Here are BLCK BRND’s 5 tips for protecting your brand’s reputation during COVID-19.

Protect Your Employees

Protecting your brand starts with protecting your employees. Now more than ever the public is concerned with how big businesses intend to safeguard their staff. So if your business is still operational, posting regular updates on the precautions, policies or training you’ve set in place for employees can go a long way to putting your customers’ minds at ease. Aim to be calm, sincere and open with any messaging, you want to communicate your care, concern and commitment to the safety of your team and customers.
Be Prepared

By now you may have a basic communication strategy in place, but you should continue to prepare for any changes in the coming weeks and months. With the lock-down in Ireland extending by three weeks at a time, having a contingency plan for different scenarios is vital for meeting customer demand. By maintaining an updated social media policy that includes a crisis communications component, you can effectively manage any negative fallout or changes to Government policy. It’s important to keep an open dialogue with your customers to protect your relationship, it will also enable you to listen and adapt to their changing needs. Outlining channels of communication and roles of responsibilities now will help you act quickly and confidently tomorrow.

Monitor Client Concerns

In the next few uncertain weeks and months, your business will experience an influx of customer concerns and queries, this is normal. To stay on top of it, it is important that you have a team responsible for monitoring and responding to customer questions quickly and efficiently. Comments and reviews can quickly mount up if left unattended, so giving your staff guidelines on how to answer everyday questions can help. Alternatively, investing in a social media marketing partner or ChatBot supplier can ease the burden. At BLCK BRND, we can help you engage with your customers and deliver your message and products to your target audience.

Coordinate Your Service Providers

If your brand works with local vendors, delivery services or any other partners in conducting day to day business, it’s important that you check in on their changing policies. Finding out whether they plan to close or limit their service can help you adjust your policies, seek alternatives or inform your customers of any changes in advance. Being upfront with your customers on how changes might impact your usual service is the key to preventing negative fallout.

Most customers are now willing to accept closures, delays or no contact drop-offs if they know it is to protect their own safety, so don’t be afraid to be open and honest in your communications. If your business is forced to close or operate part-time, remember to update your business listings. These simple steps will help protect your reputation by offsetting negative customer reviews.

Create Helpful & Relevant Campaigns

The biggest risk to your brand reputation is insensitivity. It’s natural that your immediate advertising will have undergone changes due to the outbreak, but that doesn’t mean it has to stop entirely. A study conducted by Kantar in Marketing Week found that 92% of the 35,000 consumers surveyed thought that brands should continue to advertise. That said, there was a clear focus on what kind of advertising they wanted to see; 50% believed brands should market as they always have, while 78% expected businesses to market only ‘how they would help customers in their daily lives’ and 74% wanted ‘information on their changing policies.’

What is evident is that consumers are looking to brands for help and information. Our Social Media Team are well versed in designing, segmenting and producing effective campaigns. We can help you connect with your audience and maintain your reputation throughout COVID-19. Get in touch today to benefit from lasting customer relationships. Protect your brand’s reputation by offering help and information where you can. Put in place control measures and a strong communication plan with the help of BLCK BRND. We can protect your brand reputation so you can continue to achieve your long term goals.

Need Some Marketing Advice?

Marketing for your own business can be difficult at the best of times, and marketing during the current circumstances adds another layer of complexity. However, it’s more important than ever to keep building your presence and moving forward, and BLCK BRND is here to help. From branding, to digital marketing, email campaigns, and design, our team of creatives can help to make sure your brand is far from forgotten about during this unprecedented situation.

Get in touch today.

YouTube Rules For SMEs

If a picture is worth a thousand words a video is worth a million. As a small business, you must continually think of new ways to get your products and services in front of people without breaking the bank. YouTube when used correctly can be a quick and cost-effective way to grow your audience. Here are the reasons why YouTube is a must for small businesses.

Grow Your Audience

YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world. It boasts 2 billion users with over 5 billion videos viewed daily, this is over one-third of all online activity. With that level of daily traffic, you are guaranteed to find your target audience. As long as your content educates, entertains or provides a solution to their problem, your channel is sure to be noticed. That said, with the 100s of hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute you will want to avoid getting lost in the crowd. This is why you need to post with a strategy and purpose in mind. YouTube is owned by Google, so by following Google’s keyword best practices, you can make sure your videos are seen by the right people. YouTube can be a powerful medium to showcase your products, talents or services, when employed correctly you can gain valuable leads from your target audience. At BLCK BRND, we can help your business stand out in noisy newsfeeds with high-quality video content. Our years of experience in online market segmentation and omnichannel content creation makes us the perfect people to help you achieve your goals. Get in touch today to better connect with your target audience.

Promote Your Digital

There are multiple ways businesses can use YouTube to promote their services. The most common of which is creating video ads. YouTube ads air between videos and can range from a few seconds to a few minutes long. This is a great option for bringing traffic to your website, as you only pay if the viewer clicks through to your landing page or watches more than 30 seconds of your ad. Alternatively, if you are providing an educational service you can monetize your videos by becoming a YouTube partner. This requires certain requirements (1000 subscribers, 4000 hours of Watch Time etc.) but can be a great added income.

YouTube can also be utilized as a part of a greater marketing strategy for your business. If you are seeking to increase the authority of your website, backlinks from YouTube videos is a good place to start. With Google Universal Search blending together videos, images and local searches, Google now considers video to be as important as text-only pages. Creating high-quality videos that complement the content of your website will increase your website’s authority and allow your pages to rank higher in the search results.

Provide Better Content

Whether it is informational videos, behind the scenes, training videos or product demonstrations, YouTube is an easy and effective way to grab the attention of your audience. The average user spends more than one hour a day watching videos, a large portion of this is afforded to product research. In most cases it is easier to watch a short video than to read a lengthy article, so why not use YouTubes huge audience to your advantage. The beauty of YouTube is that it offers endless potential to both small and big businesses. YouTube videos are consistently the most shared, seen and circulated content on the internet. With the right video, smaller businesses have just as much chance of going viral as a more recognised brand.

Drive More Sales

YouTube videos can be reposted and repurposed for your website and social media to help improve your overall content quality and customer engagement. Video campaigns are proven to generate a 33% increase in brand recall, with an overall increase in online sales. This is because high-quality videos are better for creativity and customer retention, which is why 93% of marketing professionals have implemented video into their marketing strategy. Being successful on YouTube requires time and effort but produces significant results, it allows you to enhance your marketing campaigns at a lower cost.

Ask Us To Help

At BLCK BRND, we can help you create deliberate, meaningful video content that educates and entertains your target market. Using YouTube for business increases your target audience and marketing abilities with no real cost to you. When utilized as a part of a greater marketing strategy it can be a valuable resource in growing your company and revenue streams.

Get in touch today to get started!

The Future for Events

Future exhibitions and events won’t be able to solely rely on attendance, they will need to adapt if they want to target and attract the lucrative ‘virtual attendee’.

During these challenging times of lockdown and social distancing, more and more businesses that are dependent upon exhibitions & conferences – whether as venues, organisers or exhibitions contractors (and, of course not forgetting exhibitors themselves) – are now looking at hosting and branding virtual events in order to maintain profile and business continuity as well as expanding their organisation’s audience and reach.

Of course, this is not new tech that’s been created because of the lockdown, many successful business events are already run online and have done so for quite some time. However, lockdown has forced more companies to recognise the flexibility of the virtual event. From the local networking event hosted on Zoom through to the international conference that provides access to downloadable content, streaming podcasts, video training, etc.

Make An Exhibit Of Yourself

No doubt, long after lockdown is over and business & social interaction once again becomes socially acceptable, real world exhibitions will become commonplace once more. inevitable, however, you will see these events are also being set up and made available for virtual attendance too. And, the ‘virtual attendee’ will become the new target audience for event marketers.

More and more seminars & conferences will be live streamed as standard, with speakers presenting from remote locations and virtual audience participation & engagement through digital Q&A and break-off rooms.
Attendees will be able to attend multiple seminars at one time should they wish via existing multiscreen solutions.

Physical attendance at an exhibition itself is inevitably going to change, and you would expect exhibitors to set up ways in which they can attract the virtual visitor. For example, via on-stand access via video link. Those who choose not to attend in person can still visit the show and, specifically visit each stand via the video link.

This means that whilst physical footfall will reduce (which will, in turn, lead to an increased demand for smaller venues), virtual accessibility will open the up the event to a wider, global audience. Attendee numbers via virtual footfall will dramatically increase.

With the visitor able to attend the show virtually, it is expected that attendance time per visitor will significantly decrease with many just virtually ‘popping into’ the show for a moment. Here they can attend that single conference or meet with a single exhibitor, and then leave.

Of course, for those events that have a fee to attend, this can be applied to virtual attendance too. Either a one-off fee or, perhaps better set at a cost per minute. The longer someone attends, the higher the value.

But this then incentivises visitors to stay for shorter periods and not hang around like they may if they were physically attending an event. And that means lower revenues.

Revenue From Virtual Visitors

This is where premium content comes into play. The virtual event can be set up to provide premium access (eg. a ‘closed’ seminar or deeper access to an exhibitor, such as a ‘meet the buyer’ session). Add on ‘products’ like these can be bought through a click of a button, thereby increasing event profitability.

In terms of marketing, those creating exhibition websites will need to adapt to the virtual attendee – adding links to multiple exhibitor hall cameras as well as to each individual camera (or ipad) set up on each exhibitor’s stand. The virtual attendee will get to see what is on offer on each stand, to meet with the company contacts and to quickly get access to the premium content (via pupil movement perhaps).

All About The Metrics

This all leads to much improved metrics. Because virtual attendance is digital, event organisers and marketers will have access to a wider range of data than ever before: how many people ‘virtually attended’, who attended, how many stands did they ‘visit’, how long did they stay on a stand, what information did they take, etc.

And all of this and more, is highly valuable to the exhibitor who can then modify and personalise their brand message to deliver exactly what their audience actually requires.

The future for exhibition agencies and especially design agencies will also focus on branding virtual events and ensuring that the virtual experience provides the same (if not a better) brand experience as it would if you were there. For both the event as a whole and also the individual exhibitor. Ensuring they have ongoing brand visibility will be the key to virtual event marketing.

Ask Us For Help

As a branding agency with many years experience in branding exhibition venues & events, the future for virtual attendance certainly looks interesting. When exhibitors, conference organisers and marketers have access to the global visitor as well as the specific virtual attendance metrics, it is going to be an a very exciting time for exhibitions.

We certainly already have the capabilities and infrastructure for events to also become virtual events now. But, whether they will, we have yet to see.

Marketing Plans As Lockdown Eases

The world is a very different place right now so ensuring you have reviewed your marketing plan is crucial and BLCK BRND is here to help you and your brand.

Are you considering creating a marketing plan? If so, read on…

While life post lockdown gradually becomes a reality for many businesses, a ‘return to normal’ is just not going to happen. Instead we all need to adjust to the new normal – people are still scared, social distancing is here to stay, the economy has shrunk, many customers and suppliers have been hurt financially and, for many budgets are severely restricted.

No doubt, it is going to become harder to attract business. So, sales and marketing departments need to work smarter to understand their (potential) client’s new requirements in the Covid-19 world.

The biggest issue that many companies will face is the fact that their focus has not been on creating a marketing plan for when we come out of lockdown. And so, those early days / months may be a confusing, worrying and frustrating time for any business who hasn’t properly prepared.

But, if you have not yet planned your marketing relaunch, don’t panic – there is always time to do so.

Create Communication

It is crucial to let your customers know that you are / how you are there for them post lockdown and what they can now expect from you.
Let them know that you understand their concerns.
Let them know if you are implementing new measures based on government guidelines.

Let them know if there are any differences in your service offerings (services, products, costs, lead times, approach, terms).

However, communication is a two-way street. You need to speak with your customers and understand how their requirements may have changed and what they may now require from you. The more you know, the better positioned you are to react to any changes in customer demand.

Set Goals

So, what are you short & medium-term goals?

Write a list of them and share this with the team for their input. Are they realistic? If so, draw up a staged plan regarding how you are going to reach them and think about what you can put in place to measure that you are on track to hit them.

Develop Marketing Collateral

Ask yourself:

How are you going to communicate your message to your customers?
What resources (time, people, budget) do you have in place to do so?

It is imperative that businesses are aware regarding which marketing routes work best for them, their clients and their budgets.

At the moment, there is certainly an issue with certain types of marketing, specifically live exhibition marketing, printed publications and print advertising. Because of this, it is not unsurprising that most businesses are focusing on digital marketing.

Live exhibition marketing will eventually bounce back in 2021 but, the short-term future does not look so bright for print.

There will always be direct mail in the marketing mix but, for many companies, the additional costs of print and distribution fees has limited its appeal. Add that to the fact that consumers are now wary about handling brochures that others may have touched, and you can see why printed collateral is no longer a go to solution.

But, digital marketing is certainly king right now and so it makes sense to ensure your website and any PPC campaigns are up to date and optimised effectively

For online retailers, they will have noticed a shift in behaviour – not surprisingly, online ordering throughout the lockdown was significantly higher than ever before and the good news for them is that this is not expected to drop significantly immediately after lockdown is over.

Over the lockdown period, consumers have embraced digital shopping and so, if you want to keep their business coming in your direction, you need to focus on client retention activities including regular communication: eMarketing, social media posts, social media advertising, etc.

Planning your digital marketing now will help you cut through the noise of the increased competition.

Consider E-Commerce

During the Coronavirus pandemic, there has been a significant shift in consumer behaviour. With the majority of people cooped up at home, buying online quickly grew to be even larger than it already was. The online retailers who experienced this sudden increase in demand often couldn’t keep up with orders leading to delays or temporary closures.

This of course varied by industry, but what we learned is that devoting major resources to e-commerce was the best way to stay relevant, operational, and even to grow despite the unprecedented turmoil.
Now that lockdown restrictions are lessening, this change in consumer behaviour is unlikely to dissipate. Anxiety around the coronavirus and social outings is expected to persist in the coming months. Many customers will still be hesitant to venture out into busy public spaces, and others may be advised not to due to being considered ‘at-risk’, which means e-commerce may continue to boom after brick and mortar businesses reopen.

For this reason, e-commerce will remain to be the best course of action for B2C businesses. It is important to remember, however, that there will be increased competition with many businesses coming to realise that they can’t afford to not be online. Planning your online marketing now can help you stand out from the crowd, and BLCK BRND’s creative marketing and design can help you make an impression in noisy competitive business environments.

Can You Handle It?

If there is a marked increase in demand for your products & services, then can you handle it. Of course, the last thing you will want to do is to turn business away so the more flexible you can be, the better.
When you are creating a marketing plan, start thinking about this best-case scenario, how would you best handle an increase? Do you need to change your terms (longer lead times perhaps)?

Let BLCK BRND Show You The Way…

Marketers have a saying: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you will never know if you have got there.”

A good plan will help preparing for your future: establish the destination, the best route and the number of steps to get there. All to ensure your brand and business objectives may be achieved.

If you would like some support in creating a marketing plan to get you set up and on track for success, we would love to hear from you.