Does Your Business Need a Makeover?

How Print, Digital, and Design Services Can Transform Your Brand

In a competitive marketplace, your business needs to stand out more than ever. Whether you’re a tradesman, dog groomer, or small business owner, staying fresh and relevant is key to attracting new customers and keeping existing ones engaged. But how do you know if your business is in need of a makeover? More importantly, what changes can you make to give it the boost it needs?

In this blog post, we’ll explore how giving your business a makeover with print, digital marketing, and design services can enhance your brand, improve customer experience, and drive growth.

Signs Your Business Might Need a Makeover

Before diving into solutions, let’s first identify some common signs that your business might need a refresh:

Outdated branding: If your logo, business cards, or website design look outdated, it could be time for a fresh new look.

Inconsistent customer experience: If your print materials don’t align with your digital presence, customers might feel confused or disengaged.

Lack of online visibility: Struggling to get noticed online or rank well in search results? You may need a digital marketing boost.

Declining engagement: If fewer people are interacting with your business, whether on social media or in person, a new marketing strategy might help re-energise your brand.

If any of these signs sound familiar, a makeover could be exactly what your business needs.

The Power of Print: A Tangible Connection with Customers

Even in our digital age, print marketing remains a powerful tool for small businesses. Printed materials like business cards, flyers, brochures, and direct mail provide a physical connection between your brand and your customers. They can leave a lasting impression, especially when they’re well-designed and professionally produced.

Here’s how a print makeover can help your business:

Professional designs: Well-designed print materials immediately elevate your brand, making it appear more polished and trustworthy.

Consistency: Updating your print designs to match your digital branding creates a seamless customer experience across all touchpoints.

Targeted marketing: Use flyers or direct mail campaigns to target specific local areas and reach potential customers who might not be online.

With fresh, cohesive print materials, your business will look modern and professional, which can inspire more trust from potential clients.

Digital Marketing: Expanding Your Reach Online

If your business isn’t taking full advantage of digital marketing, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to reach new customers. A digital marketing makeover could include everything from a revamped website to a new social media strategy and even paid advertising campaigns.

Here’s how we can help you modernise your digital presence:

Website redesign: Your website is your digital storefront, and it needs to reflect the quality of your services. We offer custom website designs that are user-friendly, mobile-optimised, and tailored to your brand.

Search engine optimization (SEO): Improving your website’s SEO will help you rank higher in search engine results, making it easier for potential customers to find you.

Paid digital advertising: Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other paid advertising platforms allow you to target your ideal audience with precision, driving more qualified traffic to your business.

Social media management: A consistent, engaging social media presence is essential for connecting with today’s customers. We can help you craft posts that not only promote your services but also foster engagement with your audience.

With the right digital strategies in place, you can reach more customers, grow your brand, and increase inquiries.

Design Services: Make a Lasting Impression

A strong brand identity starts with great design. From your logo to your website layout and marketing materials, design plays a huge role in how your business is perceived. If your brand looks inconsistent, unprofessional, or outdated, it may be time for a design refresh.

Here’s how we can help transform your brand’s design:

Logo redesign: If your logo looks old-fashioned or doesn’t represent your business anymore, a logo redesign can breathe new life into your brand.

Brand identity overhaul: We create cohesive branding packages, ensuring that your colors, fonts, and overall style are consistent across all platforms—online and offline.

Website design: A visually appealing, easy-to-navigate website is essential for making a great first impression. We’ll work with you to design a site that reflects your unique business and attracts customers.

Whether it’s a fresh new logo or a complete rebrand, investing in high-quality design services can significantly improve how customers view and interact with your business.

How We Can Help You Transform Your Business

At Local Pages, we specialise in offering print, digital marketing, and design services that give your business the makeover it needs to thrive. We know that every business is unique, so we work closely with you to understand your goals and create a plan tailored specifically to your needs. Whether you’re looking for a small refresh or a complete rebrand, we’re here to help.

Ready for Your Business Makeover?

If you think it’s time to give your business a fresh new look and attract more customers, we’re here to help. With our print, digital, and design services, we’ll work with you to create a brand identity that’s modern, cohesive, and effective.

Visit The Little Blue Blog for more insights or contact us today for a free consultation at 0117 923 1122 or info@localpages.co.uk. Let’s give your business the makeover it deserves!

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Reaching Success

Birch Hall Pennant Quarry and Cotswold Quarry's Digital Transformation with LP Digital

In today’s digital landscape, having a strong online presence is crucial for business success and visibility. Birch Hall Pennant Quarry and Cotswold Quarry, two sister businesses with a rich history, recognized this need early on. Their journey with LP Digital began with the creation of the Little Blue Books, marking the beginning of their shift from traditional print advertising to a dynamic digital approach.

The Challenge

As Birch Hall Pennant Quarry and Cotswold Quarry sought to modernize their advertising strategy, they faced several key challenges:

Building a Dual-Function Website: They needed a sister website that could effectively split into two distinct but interconnected platforms, each fully operational and optimized for search engine visibility.
Transitioning to Digital Advertising: Moving away from print to embrace digital advertising required a strategic overhaul.
Ensuring Optimal SEO Performance: Comprehensive and transparent SEO services were essential to boost their Google rankings and attract more traffic.

The Solution

LP Digital stepped in with a tailored solution to address these challenges:

Development of a Comprehensive E-Commerce Website: We built a fully operational e-commerce website for both quarries, designed to handle their unique needs while facilitating a seamless user experience.
Ongoing Monitoring and Optimization: To ensure the website’s effectiveness, we implemented continuous tracking of footfall and held monthly meetings with the clients. This proactive approach allowed us to make timely adjustments and keep everything running at peak efficiency.
Immediate Positive Impact: Within just two weeks of launching the new digital strategy, both quarries began seeing a surge in enquiries and positive results.

Insights

Throughout this journey, several key insights emerged:

Exclusive Digital Presence: Birch Hall Pennant Quarry and Cotswold Quarry have chosen to focus solely on digital advertising, forgoing other advertising channels.
Hands-On Support: Our team’s commitment to ensuring the highest standard of work was a significant factor in their satisfaction with our services.
Proactive Partnership: The relationship between LP Digital and the quarries has been described as exceptionally positive and proactive, highlighting the effectiveness of our collaborative approach.

‘Held our hand all the way through.’

Birch Hall Pennant Quarry and Cotswold Quarry’s transition to digital advertising has been a resounding success. Thanks to LP Digital’s expertise and dedicated support, both businesses now enjoy enhanced online visibility, increased customer engagement, and a robust digital presence. This success story underscores the power of embracing digital solutions in today’s business environment and the value of a proactive, supportive partnership.

You can view their website here.

Schedule a free consultation about your digital advertising needs here.

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Brand Identity: How to Build and Maintain Your Brand

Tactics and Tips for a Stronger Online Presence

Brand Awareness is, in short, the extent to which your business is recognized. Brand identity is your logo, colours, what you offer, your message, services, among other features.

Why is it important? Your brand identity is your first touchpoint with a potential customer – the stronger the image of your brand in someone’s mind, the more likely they are to engage with you. Unknown businesses aren’t seen as trustworthy – so how do you go about raising the profile of your business and gaining more loyal customers?

Brand Accessibility
Building Your Brand
Strengthening Your Brand
Examples of Strong Brand Identity

Brand Accessibility

When developing or auditing your brand identity, be sure to read the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to ensure that your published content (text, images, sound, etc.) is accessible to everyone. This will ensure you don’t lose potential customers due to flaws in design and adaptability for mobile phones.

Building Your Brand

So – how do you actually go about building a brand?

Audience: A good first consideration is always your audience. The content you post online, the logo and the colours should resonate with your audience as much as possible. For example, pink and purple are probably not the best colours for an accounting firm, but will resonate with women and younger teenage girls when purchasing handmade products or clothing. Considering and weighing audience behaviors might be tricky at first, but the more previous customer interactions you had the easier this should be. Analyzing age, income, occupation and location is a good first step.

Visual Identity: That is the nitty gritty of design – your logo, colours, pictures, mottos, theme songs; anything you can think of that represents your brand. Deciding on design features might be a little daunting, but originality that reflects audience behaviours will yield results. Ask yourself the following questions:

What is the mission of your brand?
What makes you different from your competitors?
How do you want customers to experience your brand/product/service?
What kind of emotions are you hoping to evoke?

Consistent Message: That is, your tone and message across all platforms. Contradicting statements, message or voice will decrease your brand awareness. Tone should reflect the uniqueness of your business/service and communicated appropriately across all platforms you use.

Strengthening Your Brand

So, you built your logo, decided on a colour palette and the purpose is clear in your mind. How do we them strengthen it?

Multi Channel Presence: that is a secure foothold in the door with different social media apps, emails, SMS and non-digital tools is the key to growing your brand as you will reach more customers and start building a trusting relationship. Remember – your presence and content should be adapted to each medium accordingly.

Community Connection: The easiest way to build trust between potential customers and your business is community connection; that is the way your brand interacts with the world around us and the community. This could be as simple as customer testimonials that show your brand is trustworthy, or could stretch beyond that into social causes or local, community-oriented issues. This could simply be acknowledgement of community struggles, a recent event or issue or contribution to the community through donations or other aid.

Face to your brand: Adding a face to your brand will humanize your business and make you seem more approachable and trustworthy. Whether through pictures of your employees or using personal language, any form of direct interaction will bring you closer to your customers.

Examples of Strong Brand Identity

Apple

The first thought that comes to mind when thinking Apple, or so Apple would like, is innovation and reinvention. Through every update and new product launch, at the forefront we see the portrayal of creating something new and different every time, whether the products released are actually innovative is a different story. Their entire brand is cutting-edge, inviting their customers to join them at the brink of innovation and always breaking the mold.

Coca-Cola

Besides being the most established and longest-going fizzy drink company, their brand identity is so strong that just the colour red is often associated with Coke. They’ve aligned themselves with the feeling of happiness and enjoyment through their advertising and presence online, which is often kept lighthearted and casual. The motto ‘A Coke and a smile’ sums up their values very clearly, and even if you are not an avid enjoyer of the drink, ask yourself how often do you think of coke on a daily basis.

Ikea

Ikea created an image of themselves as simple and family-oriented, and they stay in that category. From simple instructions when building the furniture to the simple and lighthearted advertising, Ikea is the first stop when shopping for furniture as it is meant to appeal to everyday people. Their tagline ‘Wonderful Everyday’ reflects their one-stop-shop ideology.

Dove

A very simple yet elegant brand targeted towards woman and girls is a prime example of effective branding. Their campaigns focus on empowering women and addressing issues such as self-esteem, body image and equality. They are a prime example of involvement in social issues to strengthen their community presence. Dove promotes honesty and optimism, embracing natural beauty through their products.

How Can We Help?

If you’re struggling with brand identity and developing your business identity, Local Pages is here to help! You can schedule a free consultation by clicking here.

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Fork ‘n’ Ale Beer Game

We build games

One thing you may not know about Local Pages is that we have a game designer in our studio.

So, when Fork ‘n’ Ale wanted a fun way to encourage more customers to visit their website and increase the amount of time that they stayed there… what better way to meet the brief than to create an addictive game for customers to play.

The game is simple. By pressing the space bar on your computer or the ‘pour’ button on your mobile phone you fill a glass with beer. Once the glass is full, your time is recorded and you can leave your initials on the leader board.

At the end of each month there is a prize for the top score .

So why is this particular game such a good marketing tool?

1 – You have to engage with Fork ‘n’ Ale’s website – the game is at the bottom of the home page exposing players to all Fork ‘n’ Ales’s marketing, including special offers and menu.

2 – The game is easy and quick to play – ideal for groups to play in a pub on a mobile phone. E.g. the one with the lowest time buys the next round.

3- To enter your score on the leader board you have to leave an email address – ideal for data capture and future marketing activities.

4 – Winners are announced on their Facebook page – encouraging players to interact with Fork ‘n’ Ale on their social media platform.

It ticks lots of boxes!

Play the game by clicking the box below.

Get a game to encourage more visitors to your website

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Call the LP Digital team today on 0117 923 1122 or book an appointment below for a call back.

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20 Top Tips for Creating Engaging & Informative Content

Everyone in business knows that we should be engaging with our customers on a daily basis with rich, informative content. It sounds great until you actually sit down, switch on your computer… and then stare at it for an hour because you don’t know where to start.

So to help get your creative juices going, here are our top 20 ways of engaging with your customers online.

1 – Infographics – Create some visual representations of ideas and information found on your website. Infographics are so much more interesting (and often more informative) than large passages of text.

2 – Memes – Those little videos and images with witty comments are often the messages that go viral.

3 – Videos – Create videos (short & sweet) giving information regarding your products and services. Don’t worry about how you sound or look like, non-professionally produced videos appear much more authentic.

4 – Product Reviews – Got a new product? Put together a product review to allow customers an insight into what you really think.

5 – User Generated Content – Get customers to produce content for you. Share stories and content from third party websites you find interesting or promote good practice.

6 – How to Guides – Put together a range of helpful guides aimed at people that use your products and services.

7 – Lists – People love lists and they improve talkability. Even a list like this one!

8 – Photo Galleries – A picture paints a thousand words. Create galleries of products and theme them to make them more interesting.

9 – Case Studies – Use these to show the breadth and depth of what you have to offer your customers and underline how great you are. Make sure they’re up-to-date and are heavy on pictures and light on text.

10 – Client Testimonials – Testimonials build trust and loyalty. So when a customer says what you did was great, ask for it in writing. Better still, ask if you can film them saying it.

11 – Newsletters – Keep in touch with your email subscribers with a monthly update featuring new products and the highlights of any articles, blogs, videos and social media posts you’ve put out that month.

12 – GIFS – Use clips from videos embedded with text to demonstrate a point.

13 – Events – Create online events like Zoom webinars to engage with your customers , record them and share with others that couldn’t attend.

14 – Images – Use, wherever possible, original images to demonstrate and reinforce written messages.

15 – Podcasts – To convey ideas that don’t necessarily require visuals, put together some podcasts on various themes that may interest your customers.

16 – Slideshares – Get innovative with Powerpoint or Keynote and create decks of slides to inform and engage with your customers and share them online.

17 – Blog Posts – If no one was interested in opinions, they wouldn’t buy newspapers. Get your thoughts down in order and publish them. Try to ensure they are not time sensitive and can be read anytime.

18 – Newsjacking – Take a news story and use it to create content that will attract positive exposure for your brand.

19 – Press Releases – Directly target the media with industry news that may be of interest to their readers.

20 – Polls – Create polls to get your customers voting and seek out their preferences and their dislikes.

If you need help with any of the above, contact the Local Pages team on 0117 923 1122 or drop us a line at info@localpages.co.uk

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How To Brief A Creative Agency

Maybe you’re a growing business looking for an agency to create a marketing campaign? Or you’ve already found one, but their work isn’t delivering the results you were expecting? Either way, you can increase your chances of success next time (or first time) ’round by immersing yourself in the brief-writing process.

Learning to put a good brief together is essential. Great briefs inspire the agency to bring your campaign vision to life. Poor ones create ambiguity and stifle creativity. Your brief doesn’t have to be complicated or convoluted, but it does need a few essential ingredients.

WHAT?

Set out in straightforward terms and simple language what it is that you are trying to promote. If it’s a product, give as much background information as possible; category performance, competitor products, any research you’ve conducted. Maybe it’s an offer or seasonal campaign, in which case the exact details are vital. Also, what’s worked well in previous campaigns? What hasn’t?

The other “what” is a practical one: the deliverables. What is it that you want to be produced, and in what format(s)?

WHY?

Why are you running this campaign? What are the objectives behind it and what would you like it to achieve? Success is best achieved when everyone involved knows what success looks like! So being as precise as possible about the KPIs is vital. We regularly get briefs asking for a campaign to increase sales. But without knowing by how much, how do we know whether it’s worked?

WHO?

You may know your customers inside out, but if your relationship with your agency is at an early stage, chances are they won’t.

The agency will want to really get under the skin of your audience, so they will need access to as much information as possible about your customers` demographics, habits, likes, dislikes, relationship with your brand, shoe size. OK, maybe not the last one. But don’t be afraid to include as much info as you have. Particularly consumer insight; you can pop any research documents in the appendix.

Download our FREE Creative Brief Template here.

WHEN?

Perhaps it’s a little obvious to say, but it’s vital that timings are outlined in the brief. When do you want the campaign to launch and how long do you envisage it running for? The other timescale issue is the response to the brief itself. Recent research from the University of the West Of England found that a major bugbear within agencies is lack of time to respond to briefs. So it’s advisable to plan ahead, and make sure Christmas campaign briefs aren’t sent out in November.

HOW?

How much money would you like to spend on this activity? Even if it’s a ballpark or bookended figure (between £x and £x), being upfront about this from the beginning means that the agency can tailor their solution to your budget. It can be tempting to simply ask for a quote, particularly if you’re unsure how much to commit. But this is counterproductive, as your agency won’t be able to propose an appropriate solution without at least an idea of what you’d like to spend. So even a rough figure is crucial.

Good luck with your next campaign!

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