Leveraging Loyalty

There’s this little hole-in-the-wall in Fort Worth that I visit on almost a weekly basis. It doesn’t have the swankiest atmosphere. None of the dishware or cutlery matches. The service is just alright, and I’m pretty sure that I could find better tacos elsewhere in town for less money. But none of that matters to me. It’s the familiarity of it…the experience. I discovered the place my senior year in college. The owners know me by name and always stop by to say hello. I sit at the same little booth, and the server doesn’t have to ask me for my order. I am a loyal customer.

Understanding why customers are loyal to your brand, from an emotional standpoint, is extremely valuable. SmartBomb Creative utilizes its emotional loyalty discovery strategies and research to ensure the effectiveness of your campaign. It’s also helpful in ensuring your message resonates and increasing your company’s value proposition.

Transactional Loyalty vs Emotional Loyalty

Is it more important to win customers’ hearts or minds? Most agree that emotional loyalty is the pinnacle of success, where consumers will look to one particular brand regardless of price, convenience or other outside factors because they have a personal connection to the brand.

Transactional loyalty differs slightly. It refers to the retailer closest to home, or the one that consistently has the lowest prices. However, when certain conditions change (say a retailer opens even closer to home), then the customer's dollars are at risk of being spent elsewhere.

Emotional Loyalty-Earning Behaviors

There may not be a science to earning emotional loyalty, but we’ve discovered there are strategies that can be exercised that will put any business in position to connect on a deep level with customers.

1. Customer Involvement

Consumers want to know the organization they're doing business with. What are their values? Do your values match theirs? Organizational transparency helps people feel like they're part of the overall effort. This is especially true for young adults, 80 percent of whom prefer to do business with an organization that supports good causes. TOMS shoes and its One for One model are the perfect example of this. This also means an organization must be highly responsive. Poor customer service is the leading reason people bail on brands. If customers are dissatisfied with an aspect of a brand, let them win and change it. It sounds obvious, but a lot of companies still miss the mark on this point.

2. Customer Empowerment

If a business wants its customers to go all-in on loyalty, the entire organization needs to go all-in on serving their needs. Every attempt should be made to ingrain a product or service into customers’ lives. That means constant customer engagement and making every effort possible to make customers experts at using that product or service. Customers should be involved in shaping almost all aspects of the business, from product development to marketing. They need to feel like they have a say.

3. Customer Recognition

In general, people want to feel important. We're all suckers for personal recognition. Why do you think the bar Cheers was so popular? Examples of this might be a bottle of a guest's favorite wine when they check into the hotel, or a personal text just before a blowout sale. These are the relationship-building tactics that put a human face on a brand. Loyalty programs are another great way to do this.

See infographic below for a snapshot of SmartBomb Creative’s Emotional Loyalty Discovery Strategies and Research.

Building Bridges

As the old saying goes…”You can’t please all of the people all of the time.” That being said, it’s a marketing agency’s job to mold its strategies to the tastes of a multitude of generational desires. Each of the three adult generations — Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials — consumes content a little differently than the other two. This makes reaching multiple audiences with the same message a bit of a challenge.

If doing a side-by-side comparison of Millennials (Gen Y) and Baby Boomers, their tastes diverge significantly when it comes to entertainment and product consumption. While Millennials are more engaged in interactive multimedia and varying perceptions in the market and respective advertising, Boomers prefer repetition and contrasting colors. Boomers display a longer attention span but find themselves more distracted by the swift pace of the modern world. Generally speaking, their senses of humor differ as well – Boomers are fans of light-hearted, witty humor, while Millennials are humored by that which is more sarcastic and offbeat. Boomers are the ones with spending power. They prefer traditional and nostalgic themes, and simplicity is key to their needs. Millennials, on the other hand, are a fast-paced generation that requires constant stimulation.

While all generations use email to some extent; some have grown up with it while others learned to use it after several years in the workforce. Some generations lead the charge with the use of social media and thrive with its short format. Others still prefer the physical copies of magazines and newspapers that are delivered to their mailboxes. Some generations acquire their news via blogs, video, Twitter and websites while others prefer to watch the evening anchors deliver current events.

With modern technology and social media at the tips of everyone’s fingers today, it’s no surprise different generations are customizing their media intake to meet their specific desires. So how should marketing agencies take these differences into consideration when preparing their digital strategies for clients? Here are three tips:

1. Consider more than just demographics when trying to understand the audience your marketing is attempting to reach. Optimize messaging across screens based on audience and generational screen preferences.

 If the marketing goal is to drive consumer behaviors like purchase and research, ensure that the marketing investment and delivery match the screen preference. For example, in categories such as investment services that require in-depth understanding of product features and comparison of multiple offers, digital marketing focused on product benefits and features is better suited for desktop and laptop screens, where users can pay attention to and act on the content in the ad. This is especially true for Baby Boomers who are more likely to do research on financial service products on a laptop than on a smartphone.

On the other hand, a hyper-local ad that requires less attention and research, such as an ad for retail, may be better served on a smartphone where younger audiences like Millennials are almost as likely to shop for clothes and apparel on a smartphone.

2. Invest in the future and the present. 

While younger audiences have primarily shifted to mobile, in the short term they are still partially reliant on laptops and PCs for purchase and acquisition activities. Commit to obtaining holistic insights that explore the individual components of your marketing's performance -- such as audience, brand lift and consumer behavior insights.

3. Take into account how screen preference influences the buyer journey.

Consumers still rely heavily on laptops and PCs for shopping across categories. Millennials are the first generation to push the envelope on mobile shopping, but they still reach for their laptops for some categories, depending on the amount of time needed and the importance of the task.

SEO Secrets of Success

SmartBomb Creative understands the ins-and-outs of what makes search engines tick. It truly can be boiled down to a few fundamental components.

1. SITE SPEED

There are defining factors that are going to allow you to rank on Google's SERPs (search engine results page) and the site speed is among those factors. Ensure that your site loads quickly, not just where you're located but from anywhere around the planet.

2. USER EXPERIENCE

Google is acutely concerned about the user's experience. Many of those algorithm adjustments recently were focused on ensuring a high-quality experience for its users.

3. DOMAIN AUTHORITY

The authority of the domain is important, but the domain's authority (aka the importance of the domain) isn't quite that simple. So this isn't just about the number of links that are going to a domain, but about the quality of those links. The domain's authority is built up over time. Try to focus on the quality of inbound links rather than the quantity of those links.

4. CONTENT QUALITY

The quality of the content is immensely important to SEO. How well-written is what you’re putting out there? Is it riddled with spelling and grammatical errors? Does the content add an enormous amount of value or is it thin and veiled in an attempt to merely rank for a keyword? Is the content unique? You should never skimp on quality!

5. CONTENT LENGTH

The length of the content is important. It is about creating content that visitors are going consume. We're talking 2,000 words and up. Not less. Less than that is largely a waste of time. Now, if your domain authority is very high, you can get away with shorter content. Studies have shown that rankings are often in the 2,000 word range and higher.

6. KEYWORD FOCUS

Integrate keywords, not only into the content itself, but also into the title, the meta description and even the canonical URL. You should definitely be using canonical URLs with keywords and a relevant directory structure that also includes keywords. You should also avoid using too many page variables after the URL.

7. MULTIMEDIA PRESENCE

Podcasts and videos are all the rage. While the written word will always be important, due to the increase in Internet speeds around the globe, these faster mediums are becoming easier to implement. Plus, Google is now looking for ways to improve its understanding of non-written words such as through videos and audios, and of course, images. One central thing is to use high-quality images that go along with your content. Audio and video, when done in the right way, delivers value to the end user, and that's what's important. Don't skimp on written word. Add multimedia the right way to give your content a polished presence.

8. ENGAGEMENT

How engaging is your content? Does it keep people reading, or do people read a few paragraphs then leave? Google knows the difference. You need to focus on keeping that content engaging. There are a number of ways to do that, but keep in mind that you need users to stick around for several minutes consuming your content.

• Utilize numbered lists and bullet points whenever possible (makes the content easier to consume).

• Make the content flow easily to keep people intrigued and reading. 

• Keep the content focused and on-topic without veering off on tangents.

• Section off the content with headings. 

9. PAGE READING LEVEL

You don't need to write at a PhD level to rank high with Google. You simply need to write at a higher reading level than average. Content that's more personal (maybe even at a lower reading level) can rank, but when we're talking about competitive keywords, you need to write a higher level. This means that you need to have diverse word usage. Think college level rather than high school level.

10. MOBILE RESPONSIVENESS

If your site doesn't load properly on mobile platforms, then you're wasting your time with SEO. You need a site that's responsive. It needs to work properly on desktop and mobile, and it needs to load quickly. You can use a framework like Bootstrap for this or if you're on WordPress, select a theme that's mobile responsive.

Survival of the Fittest

You know how those Jurassic folks keep thinking it’s a good idea to make a dinosaur zoo only to discover, yet again, that there are issues containing the giant prehistoric lizards making it impossible to ensure the safety of their guests. Every time I see the trailer for another Jurassic film, I think, “Wow, they must have an amazing PR team with miraculous damage control skills to get folks back to another one of these dino theme parks.”

While obviously these PR crises are fictional, businesses regularly experience setbacks from which they must quickly recover. SmartBomb Creative understands that while you can’t always control things that happen, you can control people’s perception of what happened. For example…

In 2016, Chipotle Mexican Grill had a chain-wide shutdown brought on by food-borne illnesses traced to contaminated products served by the fast-food restaurant. In all, around 500 people were sickened by the contaminations leading to numerous lawsuits and a net income plunge of 44 percent. In the last few years, the brand’s recovery efforts have included a serious overhaul of food safety procedures among employees, a strong Twitter presence and leveraging Snapchat to attract millennials and rebuild brand confidence.

Remember Starbuck’s 2015 plain red holiday cup controversy? The following year, the coffee chain unveiled a new cup that sported a design it claimed celebrated community. Starbucks led an outreach campaign including emails, a guest-feedback forum and online videos. Many loved the cup and its message, and others were offended at what they viewed as a political message. While again there was controversy, Starbucks now had the perfect chance to get to know its community and create a little unity.

Lululemon sprained an ankle in 2013 with two major gaffes that left the brand limping and trying to regain its balance. First there was a massive recall of several styles of yoga pants for being too transparent, and then a few months later the company’s founder claimed on television that some women’s bodies “just actually don’t work” for Lululemon clothing. He mentioned something about women’s thighs rubbing together. In a swift response, Wilson was ousted as CEO and Christine Day took the helm. The company offered full refunds for the recalled pants and put an upgraded version on shelves within 90 days. The brand made improvements to its inspection process and upped its quality control. They also launched a marketing campaign that included an educational component designed to win back hesitant clients.

None of these cases are nearly as serious as a T. Rex snacking on guests at a theme park, but they show that brands can bounce back from setbacks despite their severity and even go on to thrive in a competitive marketplace. Transparency, apologies, candor and honesty are the keys. In the unfortunate circumstance that your brand is damaged, SmartBomb can help you stand behind your core values and reach out to loyalists promptly and genuinely to rebuild your shaken brand.

Identity Crisis

“If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” I was once asked that during an interview, and I believe I awkwardly rambled on and on about my love for apples. It’s a silly question, and at the time I didn’t understand the purpose it served.

What my potential employer was trying to uncover was my self-awareness of my identity and my ability to associate that identity with the qualities found in a certain tree. Discovering your true identity or the identity of your company or business is not as easy as it may sound.

Brand identity is NOT the same as branding. It's the product of effective branding. Brand identity is also not the same as visual brand identity, even though many people confuse the two. Brand identity includes four components:

·      Brand Voice

·      Visual Brand Identity

·      Brand Values

·      Brand Personality

Together, these components create the look, tone and feel of your company to the outside world. While your brand identity may evolve slightly over time, taking the time to define your company is absolutely a valuable exercise. Ask yourself these five questions.

1. What kind of personality do you have?

Brand personality is defined as a "human set of characteristics" that are connected to a brand. Brands with a strong, well-defined personality instantly win some likability points because customers are able to relate to them on a personal level.

Human personalities are rarely single-faceted. Brand personalities shouldn't be, either. When you are in the beginning stages of defining your personality, it may be helpful to think in terms of archetypes. Some household brands and associated personality archetypes could include:

Apple: Rebel

Cheetos: Jester

REI: Outdoorsy

Target: Bold

Dawn: Eco-friendly

Subway: Optimist

Whole Foods: Peace-lover

2. What are five words that describe you?

 An important exercise towards defining your brand's identity can be developing a list of five adjectives that describe your brand's personality, look and voice. If Chik-Fil-A were to create a list, their five words might be:

Quality

Consistency

Values

Customer Service

Commitment

3. How are you different?

 What does your brand offer that your competitors can't? Perhaps more importantly, how can you communicate this in your brand identity?

Whole Foods is one of the most visible and well-known organic grocery chains. Their difference is communicated clearly in the brand's logo, which is green and includes a leaf.

It is important to note that simply being different isn't enough. As branding blogger Tito Phillips highlights, you need to actively "make a difference." This means actively carving out a niche, and continually playing to your strengths. Anyone who's shopped at Whole Foods knows the grocery chain isn't trying to compete on price.

In order for Whole Foods to maintain their "niche" of fresh, local, and specialty foods items, they can't compete on price -- and considering their brand identity, that's perfectly fine.

4. Why do your clients trust you?

 Conducting customer interviews or talking to your sales team can be an important tool for learning why your customers ultimately pick your company. The factor that leads to prospect trust and customer conversions can provide important clues to your brand identity. Your company's unique trust factor could be:

Transparency

Expertise

Flexibility

Use this "trust factor" as an important tool for defining why your brand is different and building an appealing brand identity.

5. What's your story?

Brand stories are an important component of branding. This includes both your literal history and the story of the role you play in your customer's life. Your brand's story should ultimately make your customer a hero. Perhaps you're able to make them more effective at their jobs, so they receive tons of compliments from their boss.

Will Work For Profit

Spec Work: any kind of creative work, either partial or completed, submitted by designers to prospective clients before designers secure both their work and equitable fees.

Would you go to an attorney’s office and ask them to try your case for free so you could see if they were qualified before agreeing to enter into a contract with them or compensate them for their services? Or enter a grocery store and ask to eat a cake from the bakery before deciding to buy it? Most of you wouldn’t.

It’s become quite commonplace for potential clients who walk into our office to ask to see designs and concepts before entering into an agreement with us. Designers are often asked to submit work in the guise of an entry exam on potential jobs as a “test” of their skills. Our team at SmartBomb Creative understands that every project will involve at least minimal amount of research and spec work before a client signs on the dotted line. We want to work with clients to produce communication materials for your organization, but within the scope of a formal production schedule. We do this to avoid the quality of work you are entitled to being compromised and to uphold a long-standing ethical standard in the communication design profession.

There are two main reasons for our position:

1. To assure the client receives the most appropriate and responsive work. Successful design work results from a collaborative process between a client and the designer with the intention of developing a clear sense of the client’s objectives, competitive situation and needs. Speculative design competitions or processes result in a superficial assessment of the project at hand that is not grounded in a client’s business dynamics.

2. Requesting work for free reflects a lack of understanding and respect for the value of effective design as well as the time of the professionals who are asked to provide it.

That’s why SmartBomb Creative takes a more effective approach to speculative work. Designers are willing to submit examples of their work from previous assignments as well as a statement of how they would approach your project. You can then judge the quality of the designer’s previous work and his or her way of thinking about your business.

The designer you select can then begin to work on your project by designing strategic solutions to your criteria while under contract to you, without having to work on speculation up front.

If you would like to work with our firm in developing a process that will benefit you most and maintain the high business standards we expect, our designers can provide you with solutions that will far exceed your expectations for an appropriate budget and schedule. In the end, this approach ensures a more effective, professional and profitable process for everyone involved.

From Zero to Hero

You don’t need superpowers to create your brand’s voice.

Today is the day in which so many comic book geeks have been anxiously awaiting.
Avengers: Infinity War hits theaters, which is hugely significant for the franchise because
it signals the end of an era. It seems that Marvel has been slowly building a new roster
of heroes, one that may see the retirement of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and
many others from the gang to make room for fresher faces like Black Panther, Captain
Marvel, Doctor Strange, Ant Man and more.

Avengers: Infinity War had the monumental challenge of converging many different
characters and plotlines with extremely different tones and vibes into a single successful
film. On the dark end of the tone spectrum, you have films like Watchmen, Logan, The
Dark Knight Trilogy, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman. On the lighter side, there are
movies like Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok and Ant-
Man among others. And then existing somewhere in the middle are the stories told in
Civil War, Winter Soldier, the X-Men films etc., which aren't necessarily dark and
depressing, but they all have weighty plots.

When it comes to setting the tone in a superhero movie, there’s no simple rule or
spandex-suit- and-cape- fits-all way to do it. Finding the voice or tone for your new
company, product or brand isn’t that different from the DC folks determining if Wonder
Woman would be portrayed as dark and brooding or the class clown in her amazon
warrior training.

Before you can draft content for your website, create your first blog or even tweet your
first tweet, you will need to define your brand voice. This is the heart and soul of your
communications and how you will ultimately connect with your audience. Whether it’s
informative, authoritative, fun, witty, playful or serious, your voice must be authentic
and consistent across all mediums. Studies have proven that consumers will buy from
brands in which they connect on an emotional level and steer clear from brands that
they don’t. Here are some helpful exercises SmartBomb uses with its clients to help
them jumpstart the process.

Build Archetypes
Getting into the heads of the people you are trying to reach is a great start in defining
your brand voice. Pick one person from each of your target audiences (college students,
young mothers, urban hipsters, etc.) and answer the following questions:

• What does he or she look like?
• What does he or she care about?
• Where does he or she work?
• What does he or she do for fun?
• What does he or she want from your brand? 
• I want my brand to make people feel _______.
•  _______ makes me feel this way.
• I want people to _______ when they come into contact with my brand.
• Three words that describe my brand are _______ , _______ , and _______.
• I want to mimic the brand voice of _______.
• I dislike brand voices that sound _______.
• Interacting with my clients and potential clients makes me feel _______.

Go for a Test Drive
Get a group of your closest and trusted peers together and ask them what excites them
most about your brand. Ask them why it’s unique and what words or phrases they
associate with the brand. Using that feedback, construct a one or two-sentence mission
statement in a variation of brand voices and see which one is most exciting and feels the
most natural. This process is a lot like developing a recipe; you may find that you need a
pinch of salt or a splash of lemon to make it just right. Send the finalized options around
to the group and see which resonates the most.

Find Inspiration
It may help to find other brands that have a similar voice to yours. It’s not always
necessary to reinvent the wheel. Find inspiration in some of these successful brand
voices.

•  The NFL: The ideals of the sport mirror most American’s ideals they wish to see in themselves: patriotic, tough, perseverance, etc.  In short, the sport represents everything American, therefore the brand represents more than just a sport.  
• Coca-Cola: Despite having grown into a massive global industry with innumerable products, Coca-Cola has never strayed from its timeless and basic ideals. Throughout the decades and multitudes of marketing campaigns, Coca-Cola has remained consistent when communicating one strong and effective message: pleasure. Enduring, simple slogans such as “Enjoy” and “Happiness” never go out of style and translate easily across the globe.
• Whole Foods: Whole Foods is the epitome of all things healthy living, thanks to its authoritative—yet approachable—voice.

You want people who follow you on Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, visit your
website, and interact with your customer service department to have the same positive
and memorable experience. In order to do so, build a style guide describing your brand
and its voice and create a plan to implement it across your platforms.

So what do we do after we find your voice? We start talking!

Ticking Time Bomb

Explosives, in any context, aren’t always the best conversation starter…especially around the TSA. But we pose the following question: If you find yourself on a bus in L.A. travelling 50 mph with Sandra Bullock, don’t you want Keanu there to give you a hand? In this symbolic scenario, SmartBomb Creative acts as the entity guiding our clients to successful outcomes in DFW’s rapidly increasing consumer market.

Deciding on how to create your advertising budget is a decision each business must make. Your available resources will determine how difficult a decision this will be. Do you develop your own ads? Can you? Can you afford to use an advertising agency? Can you afford not to?

SmartBomb understands the importance of creative advertising that communicates the look and feel of your business to build the image you desire. What is the “persona” of your business? Is it an image that is fun, formal, secure, functional, intellectual, reliable or a combination of these qualities? Your advertising must capture and communicate the optimal attributes. If you cannot accomplish this goal in-house, your decision to buy these resources is already made.

Fort Worth’s population is expected to jump from 854,113 in 2018 to 1.2 million in 2040. What that equates to is a lot of new business flooding the market. How do you plan to differentiate yourself?

Hitting the Books

At a creative agency, every day is different. Sure each day starts planted in front of our Macs with stout coffee in hand, but an eclectic client base with wide-ranging needs keeps us entrenched in many fields and always on our toes.

While many of our services are easily anticipated seeing that we are a creative agency, one of our areas of expertise differentiates us from the other guys in town. SmartBomb Creative specializes in all aspects of book design. From the first contract to the final sales figures, we’ve got you covered: editorial work, typesetting, cover and page design, eBook formatting, marketing and publicity.

Clients work directly with us as partners as we guide them to create world-class books. We deliver print-on-demand publishing solutions while embracing technology and innovation to provide a significant edge in the eBook world.

Other services in SmartBomb’s creative arsenal include:

Strategy

Audience Insight

Brand Positioning

Message Development

Connection Planning

Media Strategy

Creative

Advertising

Design

Social Media Content

Digital and Mobile Marketing

Retail Merchandising

Copywriting

Events

Production

Broadcast

Video

Digital

Motion Graphics

Print

Collateral