LEVERAGING SUCCESS
How to use your past projects and sales to build trust with potential customers.
“Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create raving fans.”
Ken Blanchard
Phew, you made it! Another financial year done and dusted. Hopefully, when you look back you can be proud of what you have achieved and feel excited and motivated for the year ahead.
For Wow, it’s been another year of growth, exciting projects and building relationships with some fantastic new clients. It’s also been wonderful to have the opportunity to continue to work with our partnership loyalty clients and work alongside them to see their businesses grow and succeed too!
And of course, one of the most exciting successes just recently is the launch of our face-to-face workshops which are an opportunity for Alysha to share her branding knowledge to help other small business owners build their own brands. It’s an exciting endeavour that we look forward to developing in the year ahead.
This month, our hot topic is all about leveraging all your amazing success stories and customer relationships to help drive future success. We are going to talk about how you can leverage your past success to gain new customers, drive sales and build a trustworthy brand.
So, without further ado, let’s get into it!
Warmly, Alysha
Owner, Wow Studios
PS. With only 3 weeks to go until The Local Business Awards… keep your fingers crossed for us that we take home another win. 😊
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Exciting News – Wow does Bali; The joy of being a solo operator.
Let’s Talk Branding – Leveraging Success; How to use your past projects and sales to build trust with potential customers.
Upcoming Workshops – Define your Target Audience – 16th July. Places filling quickly!
Past Stories – More blogs about branding.
Client Spotlight – Meet Cass from Affordable Web Design.
Feel Inspired – Dove – Project #ShowUs
EXCITING NEWS
WOW DOES BALI; THE JOYS OF BEING A SOLO OPERATOR
One of the big perks of running your own creative studio is the ability to be able to do it from just about anywhere, so last month I decided it was time to find out what working abroad was all about. It was just a one-week taster experience to get my feet wet, but it turned out to be a great idea. Now I know I can do it successfully, I can think about planning a more exciting adventure.
From getting around and ensuring you have the right setup, to working out of internet cafes, dealing with time zones and balancing work and play, their is plenty to get your head around, but the benefits are definitely worth it.
I would love to hear your stories, tip & tricks. If you have experienced working abroad, please share your experience and what you have learnt along the way in the comments section at the end of the newsletter. Learning from other people’s experience is always the best way!
LET’S TALK BRANDING
LEVERAGING SUCCESS;
How to use your past projects & sales to build trust with potential customers.
Marketing your small business doesn’t have to be expensive or overwhelming and you don’t have to do it all on your own. These days consumers want to hear about real-life success experiences from customers who use your products and services. In an article published by Review42 I recently read; the stats don’t lie.
Take a look at these staggering figures.
- 92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know.
- Friends’ social media posts influence the purchase decisions of 83% of US online shoppers.
- 75% of Instagrammers will make a purchase or tell a friend when they get inspired by a post.
- Consumers referred by a friend are four times more likely to buy.
Leveraging off the success of past sales and the favourable experiences of your customers builds trust with your audience, enhances your online presence and creates positive engagement with your community. So, how can you go about it I hear you say. Read on as I share some great ways to build customer engagement and get your customers sharing their success stories to help you grow!
Success Stories & Case Studies
Sharing real life success examples of your projects and engagement with your clients demonstrates value and builds trust. A great way to showcase a big project is to publish a case study. It’s an awesome way to share with potential clients what it’s like to work with you and just how skilled you are at what you do. Case studies give you the opportunity to explain the problem/need the client had and how you were able to assist and solve the issue. You can provide client testimonials, before and after pics, progress photos and explain all the details that made the project something special. Adobe has a great article with all the tips and info on how to write a case study.
Client Testimonials
Of course, you don’t have to do a big project and create a case study to get a testimonial that showcases your success with a product or project. Asking your happy customers for testimonials is something you should be doing on a regular basis. It gives your brand authenticity and builds trust. Testimonials can take many forms, it could be something as simple as an online review, a social media post with a shoutout to your business or even kind comments you received in a text or email when the job was done successfully. Testimonials can also be much bigger and take the form of video content, responses to a questionnaire or even an interview. However you do them, they are an extremely useful tool. So don’t be afraid to reach out and ask your clients. If they enjoyed their experience with you, they are quite likely to say yes! Here is a great read from Hubspot on how to request testimonials and it even includes some templates.
Client Spotlights
Just as I do in my monthly newsletter, client spotlights are a great way to showcase not only the successful work you do with particular clients, but more importantly they give you an opportunity to give back and showcase your clients and what they do to all your followers. This helps promote them, and also gives your followers a sense of what types of clients you work with. You can put spotlights in a newsletter, feature them on your website or create a social media post. Click here for a great article by Conroy Creative Counsel on how to write a client spotlight.
Video Stories & Photo Showreels
Short videos and photo showreels are a fantastic way to reveal the great work you have been doing. They are especially useful for before and after shots or showcasing the successful project journey from start to finish. You can keep it simple and just use photos and videos of the work you did, or you can get a bit more involved and interview your clients about the project and the end result or jump in front of the camera yourself and share the details that way. Don’t be afraid to show your face to your audience, it builds rapport and gives your audience the opportunity to get to know you. Here’s some info from Creative Bloq about how you can create a demo reel and below is an example of one of our simple concept showreels.
Concept to Creation: Sage & Skye
Join us as we explore the logo design process with Sage & Skye Events.
We began with the idea of utilising the Sage plant in the logo design and using a real life plant image as the base we sketched a custom sage drawing.
We then converted this into a digital file and created a range of logo designs utilising the sage drawing in a variety of ways incorporating the circular design style the client wanted along with their tagline; Luxury Picnics & Table Settings.
The final design utilises the sage drawing and tagline as a circular border to frame the business name with a soft sage green colour palette.
Simple, elegant and luxurious. This logo exudes an air of stylish indulgence.
Work in Progress
Take your viewers on the journey with you and create work in progress posts. You can do this with video footage or still images. This is particularly useful if the customer journey takes a long time, for instance building a house. It’s a great way to give you content you can use regularly and show the little success milestones rather than having to wait until the project is fully complete. It’s also a great way to showcase your fantastic work or even how you go about problem solving when issues arise. New to video? Here are a few options you can try out to edit like a pro.
Live Streams
Live stream videos are a great way to take your audience with you behind the scenes or share some of the customer experience with them. You can do Q&A segments with clients that come into your store, share footage of customers having a successful experience buying or trying out your products or if you’re an experience based business you can give them a taste of what its all about. It can be a little daunting to get on a live video without access to a delete button, but it shows your audience you’re not afraid to reveal the real you! Pro tip, try to announce in advance for a few days that you’re going to go live… that way your audience can plan to be available to watch it in real time. Want to learn a bit more before you dive in, check out this great Streaming 101 advice article from Restream.
Ask for Online Reviews
These days if you don’t have an online presence and more importantly reviews, you may as well not bother at all! One of the most common ways for your potential customers to decide if your product or service is the one for them is to read your reviews online. Hopefully some come naturally because your products are so great customers feel compelled to jump online and share their positive and successful experience, but in reality, you’re going to need to ask them to leave a review. Pro tip, make it as easy as possible for them. Send them a link or create a QR code and pop it on the counter so all they have to do is click and post! And remember, Google Reviews is a major one, but depending on your industry there could be other sites that matter even more… Yelp, Trip Advisor, Gourmet Traveller, etc. It’s also really important to make sure you stay on top of the reviews you receive. Respond to everyone in a timely fashion, positive and negative, as it shows your engaged and care about what people have to say. Need more info, read this great how to ask for reviews guide from Reviews.io.
Use Incentives
Many of your customers will be more than happy to get involved, especially with the simple ones like online reviews but it can also be useful to offer incentives. Particularly if your interactions with customers are short such as the purchase of a clothing item. You can encourage them to take the plunge with incentives. It could be a free gift, a discount or even a competition with a fun prize. Once again, its important to make it easy. Create a hashtag or give them a link, share ideas on what they can do or create a competition and tell them how to engage and share their successful engagement with your business. It could be something as simple as sharing a pic of them wearing the clothing they bought from you with a hashtag, commenting on one of your posts, or perhaps an unboxing video of them opening the box when the package arrives. However you get them engaged, you’re onto a winner when it comes to building trust and credibility and also gain fresh content you can repurpose for free or very little cost. Need some giveaway ideas? Check out this article by 33Square.
Create Brand Advocates
Give your customers motivation to share their successful experiences. When there is something in it for them, they are substantially more likely to get involved. Create an exclusive community where they are the first to hear about special offers and product updates, receive points for engagement and sharing pics/videos and receive members only offers. It can take a little work to get it off the ground, but the benefits can be enormous especially for fashion brands and similar businesses where influence is everything! Learn more about setting up a brand advocacy program here thanks to Hootsuite.
There you have it, nine ways to leverage the success of positive customer engagements that will help you build your brand up, create trust, authenticity and credibility. So, what are you waiting for, get out there and give it a go!
UPCOMING WORKSHOPS & EDUCATION NEWS
WANT TO LEARN MORE, CHECK OUT SOME OF OUR PAST STORIES
When we think of branding as small business owners, many of us often hold the belief that it’s a marketing strategy reserved just for the big boys, however that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Jam packed full of simple to understand and super useful and actionable data on ANZ consumer trends, this report highlights information every small business owner needs to know to be successful in 2024.
While it may feel like a lot of upfront effort and an investment of your precious time, the benefits of proactive marketing & branding will absolutely make it worth it!
CLIENT SPOTLIGHT
PLEASE WELCOME CASS FROM AFFORDABLE WEB SOLUTIONS
This month I caught up with this beautiful and successful lady, Cass from Affordable Web Solutions. I met Cass at the beginning of my business journey and nearly three years on it was wonderful to catch up for a chat and hear all about how she is going with her web design business.
Having used her services myself on some help with my website back end, I can tell you she certainly knows her stuff!
- Website Design and Development: Creating custom, high performing mobile friendly websites optimised for speed and security.
- Website Hosting: Providing secure, reliable, and Australian based hosting solutions with backup and recovery options, including an offsite backup strategy for disaster recovery.
- Website Management: Affordable Web Solutions is committed to providing ongoing support to ensure your websites remain effective and up to date, giving you peace of mind about the longevity of your online presence.
- Copywriting: Crafting compelling SEO enriched copy to engage audiences and drive conversions.
- SEO Services: Conduct keyword research, optimise local SEO, and manage Google Business Profiles to increase website traffic and conversions.
What brought you to Wow?
I met Alysha during my time with the BX Networking group. Her confidence and passion for design were genuinely inspiring. Website design requires a distinct skill set compared to Graphic Design. Skills I didn’t have. When I struggled to create new business cards on my own, WOW stepped in and delivered beyond my expectations.
What was the collaboration process like?
Alysha was incredibly accommodating, addressing every need without hesitation, including efficiently handling the card printing process. She readily provided the required output files for the printer and welcomed changes with open arms, offering her insightful ideas along the way.
FEEL INSPIRED
When it comes to engagement campaigns, there are not too many companies out there that can compete with the beautiful campaign ideas that Dove comes up with. Creative, engaging and inspirational.
This month, take a look at Project #ShowUs. Dove is partnering with women & non-binary individuals everywhere to create Project #ShowUs, a collection of 10,000+ images that offer a more inclusive vision of beauty for all media & advertisers to use.
CREATE THE UNEXPECTED, DELIVER HAPPINESS!
WOW STUDIOS – WE BRING YOUR CREATIVE IDEAS TO LIFE
