Let’s Get Personal–How Emotions and Empathy Play Into Branding and Marketing Campaigns

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As an entrepreneur or startup business, it isn’t uncommon to find yourself wearing many hats during your day to day business operations. Of all the hats you’re likely to wear, probably the most challenging one to slip on is your marketing and advertising hat.

In today’s modern world, that means completing hundreds of technical steps in just the right way. You have to be sure that your business website is user-friendly, that you have a matching mobile app, keeping your social media profiles updated, as well as everything else you have to do to keep your company running smoothly.

You might be thinking, “How in the world can I do all the things I need to do, plus run a successful marketing plan to attract new business?”

Many small business owners, freelancers, mompreneurs, etc. that handle their marketing and advertising campaigns on their own are forced to “think outside of the box” to promote their business without breaking their advertising budget. While this may seem like an overwhelming task, this is actually an excellent opportunity to get your creative juices flowing and create a strong bond with your audience and customers.

Here are a few ideas to help inspire you.

Tell Your Story – One of the best things about running your own business is getting the chance to share the story behind the company. No matter how big or small your Organization is, your story should be woven into the tapestry of your business image and branding to build stronger ties with your target demographics. Don’t forget to mention the ‘When, Why, and How” of your foundation. By sharing your story, people can relate to you and will choose to do business with you instead of your competitors. For example, if your business is a third generation family business, this is “boast worthy.” Tell the story of your family and the company that got built as a result of the hard work and passion of the founders and the generations that came after them.

Branding Elements – In 2017, it’s all about your ‘brand.’ By tying in branding elements with your story, you’re creating something that is truly unique to only you. For instance, if you are creating and selling handcrafted goods, you might consider using your name or your image to represent the business on business cards, product packaging, letterhead, your website, and on your social media platforms. If you have an idea in mind, but you’re not sure how to implement it, the best way to turn your branding vision into a reality is by speaking with a branding professional as soon as possible. Explain to them your basic (or even complicated) branding ideas and let them help you bring them to life. The more you’re able to communicate what you want clearly, the easier it will be to target on your online and offline branding and marketing creatives. If your creative energy isn’t as sharp as you would like, you can trust that the agency that you choose to work with will have their team come up with designs that suit your requirements. Your creative team is your ally in all steps of the branding life cycle.

Colors Matter – It’s no secret that color psychology is an integral part of all branding and marketing campaigns. If you aren’t familiar with the concept of color psychology, this is primarily using specific colors to help elicit the desired response. Usually a purchase. One strong example is McDonald’s. Missing those bright golden arches is hard! While their branding and advertising campaigns have been modified and changed over the years, a few things remain constant. The arches and the colors bright yellow and red. (It should come as no surprise that both of these colors are both known to stimulate the appetite!) Other large brands that use these bright colors in their branding elements include Burger King, Coca-Cola, MasterCard, and many others. Your branding team should be able to work with you to establish a memorable and unique logo that represents your company.

Your Brand Voice – Once you’ve created your basic branding elements, you are in business! The next step in strengthening your brand is finding the ‘voice’ of your company. When I say ‘voice,’ I am referring to the tone and demeanor of language your company uses when communicating with potential clients, existing customers, and your fans on all of your social media platforms, in email, in live chat sessions, and other sales and marketing channels. By staying consistent in your communications, you help establish more trust with the people who interact with you, regardless of whether they are new and existing clients, vendors, or partners. Your brand voice is part of your organization’s identity, so choosing one that resonates with your core demographics is key to your brand. No matter whether you decide to adopt an informal or formal approach in your corporation or organizational messaging, you always want to be sure to keep things professional. Using simple pleasantries including the words “please” and “thank you” are always recommended when communicating in any capacity.

People Like To Do Business With People They Like – It should come as no surprise that people usually prefer to do business with people they like and trust. Now more than ever, personal marketing is a big part of many small businesses who have grown to much larger enterprises. If you are taking on the role of a spokesperson or a salesperson, one of the biggest ways to affect someone’s emotions is for them to like you. If you provide a valuable product or service and you have a great personality to help promote your company, there is unlimited potential for where you can go and what you can achieve!

You Don’t Have To Do It All Yourself – One of the biggest misconceptions is that you have to do everything yourself when working on your marketing and sales. Unless you have years of experience in building a brand and running a successful marketing campaign, there is no reason not to consult with an expert in the field. Colleen Eakins Design is here to help with all aspects of your advertising and marketing needs. Contact Us Today!

Mobile App Marketing Trends [Infographic]

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Denese EakinsDenese is a lover of knowledge and puts her research skills and creative eye to good use with her infographics. When she’s not researching and designing visuals to present data, she spends time volunteering in her other passion–health education.

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Using Technology To Increase Church Security

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Safety and security is a subject that is on everyone’s mind these days and for a good reason. All you need to do is watch or visit the local or worldwide news outlets to see that there is unrest, uncertainty, and mayhem taking place throughout the world around you.

In recent history, places of worship have been at the center of a number of random, senseless, and deadly attacks.

As a religious leader, it’s your duty to do everything within your power to keep your organization safe and prepare for a myriad of potentially dangerous scenarios such as inclement weather, intruders, theft, vandalism, hostage situations, power outages, etc.

While some may argue that too much technology is bad, when it comes to security, technology is your biggest ally. With so many security products and services available, you can make your church safer for the entire congregation, staff members, visitors, and volunteers. Another significant advantage of using technology is that it’s cost-effective. Any investments you make in upgrading the security of your buildings is worthwhile.

Here are a few security implementations worth considering:

Security Cameras – Security cameras – particularly ones that are monitored by a professional security company help identify threats and speed up response times from emergency personnel. In the case of theft, fire, or other misdoings, security footage is helpful in determining what happened and identifying any subjects associated with the event. Mounting surveillance cameras both indoors and outdoors allows you to get a full view of the activities taking place in and around your buildings. Private and Semi-Private spaces including offices, nurseries, classrooms, and access points are all highly vulnerable, so it’s a smart idea to use video surveillance in these areas of your facility. Another effective way to deter crime or unauthorized access to your place of worship is to prominently display stickers and signs that alert people that their activities are being recorded. Sometimes just the threat of being recorded is enough to discourage someone from doing something harmful.

Mobile App – If you’re weighing the advantages and disadvantages of a mobile app for your church, the advantages heavily outweigh the disadvantages. Not only can a mobile app for your church help keep you connected with your congregation, but it can also serve as a central communication center in the event of a crisis. Features such as push notifications allow you to notify people instantly with updated information and instructions, should an event transpire at your location. For churches who have implemented an emergency action plan (see below) you have the ability to share this information seamlessly with everyone who has downloaded the app to their smartphone or mobile device.

Panic Buttons – Since many places of worship maintain an “Open Door” policy during regular business hours to provide a place for spiritual refuge and guidance; you want to do everything you can to protect the people who are working there since they are accessible to all visitors. To reduce their possible exposure to danger, adding a panic button or alarm system offers an extra layer of security for any situation that might arise. Silent alarms are stealthy, so alerting the authorities doesn’t alert the perpetrator that emergency personnel is on the way, which could potentially save lives and bodily harm.

Emergency Action Plan – In the case of an emergency, having an action plan is critical to keeping people safe. Having an emergency action or response plan establishes organizational procedures for everyone to follow if there is a major crisis. Part of this action plan is to assign roles and responsibilities to execute the emergency plans in a calm and composed manner. Every type of urgency should be taken into account and procedures should be set accordingly. When putting an emergency action plan into place, you should refer to your property blueprints to create evacuation routes, designated shelter areas, and other protocols if there is an incident of any sort.

Build A Volunteer Safety and Security Team – chances are good that your church has plenty of members who would be willing to volunteer to help with enforcing safety and security. Consider purchasing matching t-shirts, vests, or jackets that identify your safety and security crew quickly. By doing so, your parishioners and visitors can readily determine who can help them if they need. If you are already having problems with crime in the area where your church is, a visible security and safety presence is a powerful way to discourage culprits from targeting your church. Areas where having a security presence is in the parking lot, entrance doors, as well as nurseries, daycare facilities, and classrooms.

Setting The Plans Into Motion

If you’re ready to put your security and safety plans into action, the first step is discussing your objectives with board members and coming to an agreement on details such as the budget and potential vendors for various aspects of your security plan. Once you’ve established a basis for the security blueprint, you can move on to taking bids from merchants who provide the products and services you’ve decided are critical to your organization.

Once the ball is rolling, you can tell your parishioners about the initiatives you’re taking to boost security and safety. Undoubtedly, your members will welcome your efforts to keep your place of worship a safe place.

An Ounce Of Prevention Is Worth A Pound Of Cure

You can’t go wrong by increased security precautions in and around your place of worship. By implementing a multi pronged approach to securing your facility in the event of any incident, you’re taking the right steps to protect your congregation, as well as the building itself. As the old saying teaches us, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The sooner you take steps to safeguard your church, the better.

If you would like to learn more about deploying a mobile app to boost security and communications for your congregation, we want to hear from you! Contact us today! We’re happy to help you with all aspects of your mobile app needs.

Having a mobile app makes good business sense [infographic]

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Denese EakinsDenese is a lover of knowledge and puts her research skills and creative eye to good use with her infographics. When she’s not researching and designing visuals to present data, she spends time volunteering in her other passion–health education.

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Is A Mobile App Right For Your Church?

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It’s an amazing time in history. As a Religious leader, there are more technological tools at your disposal to not only streamline your communications with your existing congregational members, but also to attract and build a larger following.

All you have to do is think of major platforms such as Facebook to realize how technology improves our ability to keep in touch with others and extend our reach with those we do not yet know

One of the biggest game changers for Facebook was the implementation of a mobile app for their users. By doing so, they took steps to assure an improved user experience for everyone accessing the platform on their preferred device. In recent years, the sales of smartphones and mobile devices has surpassed the sales of traditional desktop and laptop computers. The way that people use and access the internet has changed, so it was a ‘no-brainer’ to invest in improved technology.

While you might think “Why should we get a mobile app for our church? Isn’t a website enough?” The short answer is that a website (even one that is mobile friendly) is very different from a mobile app.

A mobile app is optimized to operate on a smartphone or tablet. At the tap of an icon, anyone who has downloaded your church app can instantly connect with functionality only available on your app.

When weighing the advantages of a mobile app for your church, here are some things to consider.

Your app should be useful to your parishioners and go further than being eye-pleasing. The more value that your app provides, the better. If it doesn’t add enough perceived benefits, the likelihood of your users forgetting to use it – or worse – delete it, is high.

One of the most significant features your church members are sure to enjoy are push notifications. Push notifications are a nearly ‘can’t miss’ way to share news or updates with your congregation at the press of a button. Push notifications are a straightforward way to send information and updates about benefit dinners, dances, ministry group outings, rummage sales, car washes, Vacation Bible School, bake sales, fundraisers, retreats, special masses or services, or event changes, delays, or cancellations. With this type of connectivity, you can be sure that you’re always in touch with your parishioners on their favorite mobile device.

An optimized church mobile app may also include daily devotional and inspiration, recorded sermons, a member directory, volunteer listings, and other resources your members find helpful.

By treating your mobile app as a resource center, church members are never in the dark about what’s going on at their house of worship.

One of the advantages of being a church is that your members serve as your captive audience for downloading the app. Instead of having to build your app user base from the ground up, you have your existing parishioners who can download the app instantly. Since you already have an affinity group of users, you won’t have to compete with several other apps for your user’s attention. You can build a much stronger community with the help of technology and your mobile app. It serves as a central community center to provide information about upcoming events, volunteer opportunities, school functions (if your church has a school,) member directories, community announcements, and planned outings and excursions. In a nutshell, a mobile app is one of the most efficient ways to keep in regular communications with all of your parishioners from the device they use the most – their smartphone or other preferred mobile device.

A built-in audience is a great place to start. If you want your app to get distributed to a wider audience, it has to be useful, attractive and technologically sound. You want to eliminate as many quirksome bugs as possible before putting it into full release. Things like unexpected crashes and slow load times are two of the biggest reasons that people uninstall or delete apps from their mobile devices. Because technology is constantly changing and evolving, having the ability to upgrade and adapt your mobile app in the future helps you stay competitive. Once you’ve deployed your app, don’t be afraid to ask your users for feedback on how your app can be improved. You should be willing to adapt your app to meet the needs of your users as time goes along. The best ideas often come from the people who are the biggest advocates of your app. Your most loyal users are the ones who will have the most working experience with the app.

Since they regularly use all of the different features and functionality, they can tell you ways that it can be improved, offer new ideas for future development, and give “bug” reports helping to fix issues with the app quickly. You always want to put your best foot forward with your church mobile app and provide a seamless experience.

Unfortunately, one bad user experience can result in a negative impression of the app. Should they decide to tell their friends and family members, this discourages them from downloading the app, as well. On the bright side, you can expect the same reaction to your app if it is an excellent one. Your avid users will tell the people in their circles about how impressed they are with your mobile app. This constructive feedback is sure to influence others to give the app a try, so they can get all of the benefits of becoming a mobile app user. For this reason, it’s critical to select a mobile developer who has the experience to complete the job to your specifications and is there to offer guidance and assistance when needed to enhance the app on a needed basis.

Have more questions or want to learn more about how to launch a mobile app for your church? Contact us today! We would love to help you with all of your mobile app needs!