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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Outdated branding: If your logo, business cards, or website design look outdated, it could be time for a fresh new look.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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Digital Marketing Must-Haves for Local Businesses going into 2025

Elevate your digital presence in 2025

As a local business owner – whether you’re a tradesman, hairstylist, dog groomer, or restaurant owner – having a strong online presence is crucial. It’s not enough to have a website and a Facebook page; in the growing and developing online world it’s important to do as much as you can to get your business found online. Here are four essential digital marketing elements to help your local business thrive in 2024:

1.Google Business Profile Optimization

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is a free tool that allows businesses to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps – it’s the little box that appears on the tight when Googling a business. It’s crucial for local SEO (see below) and helps customers find and connect with your business. Google Business Profile is often the first point of contact for potential customers. It’s important you keep on top of your page by:

Go to google.com/business and claim your listing if you haven’t already! A good way to check is opening a tab in incognito mode and searching up your business

Keep your information up-to-date (hours, services, contact details)

Regularly post updates, offers, and photos

Encourage and respond to customer reviews

2. Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel Marketing is all about creating a seamless experience for your customers across all touchpoints – both online and offline, whether they’re browsing your website, receiving emails or checking your social media. For local businesses, this means connecting your physical location, website, social media and customer service efforts:

Ensure consistent messaging across social media, email, and your website, including consistent branding and voice. For more tips on how to build and maintain your brand, you can read our help guide here

Implement cross-channel retargeting strategies for customers that leave your website or social media without taking action

Use customer data to provide personalized experiences regardless of the platform

3. Local SEO Strategy

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is probably the most important thing to consider when trying to attract more website visitors. Essentially, you want your website to appear at the very top of all search results when a key word or phrase is searched on Google. There’s a couple things you can do to appear more often in those organic search results locally:

Use location-based keywords (e.g., “hairstylist in [Your City]”)

Create location-specific pages on your website

Build citations on local business directories

4. Online Booking and Payment Systems

Convenience is the number one seller – the easier it is to reach you and buy your product/service – the better. Make it easy for customers to do business with you:

Implement an online booking system for appointments

Offer contactless payment options (cash is not widely used anymore!)

Consider a loyalty program to encourage repeat business

A fully operational e-commerce website for goods and products

By incorporating these digital marketing must-haves, you’ll be well-equipped to attract and retain local customers in the increasingly digital marketplace of 2024, going into 2025. The upcoming New Year is a good time to consider evaluating and expanding your digital marketing strategy.

Local Pages offers free consultations about your marketing needs. We pride ourselves on our bespoke approach, so don’t wait and level up your digital presence in 2025! Book a consultation 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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The Art of Account Management

So you’ve worked really hard to win over those new customers, now how do you keep them happy? It sounds silly and it’s honestly not rocket science, but the value of good account management should never be underestimated.

Expectations

The fundamental pillar of any business relationship is understanding what your customer expects from you, and then delivering on any promises made, and account management allows you to do this. A major bug-bear of customers is that a Sales Representative goes in and promises the world and the delivery just doesn’t match up. Be very clear from the get-go about what you are able to do for your customer, now and in the future. If a product is on Back Order and isn’t going to be available – tell them. Be clear, provide a valid explanation and move on. Under-delivering or allowing your customer to feel let down just isn’t cool.

Make Yourself Available

No-one likes to chase or have to make a second phone call. Return messages and emails within a few hours, even if it’s just to say I have your voicemail/email and I’m working on it. Your customer needs to know they have been heard and that their query or complaint is in hand. If it’s difficult to get hold of you to get something actioned, they can and will very quickly go elsewhere.

Build a Relationship

Get to know your customers and what makes them tick. Monday’s and Friday’s tend to be the best days to do this. Ask open ended questions such as “What did you do this weekend?”, as opposed to “Did you have a good weekend?” which can be answered with a simple yes or no. Listen to their answer, and ask further related questions. Show a genuine interest in someone and their life and it goes a long way to building that lasting relationship.

Be Prepared

Always do your leg-work ahead of any client meetings and reviews. No-one likes to feel that their time has been wasted.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Yes, it’s absolutely a two-way street but to a certain extent – the customer is always right. If your company has let them down in some way, accept that they are most likely going to be upset about it – empathise and put it right. That’s not to say be a door-mat and always back down but there are ways to get a productive outcome out of a complaint and there are ways to add fuel to those flames. You always want it to be the former.

Offer Something New

Think of ways to make your customer feel special. This doesn’t have to be an extravagant gesture, the small things can be just as effective. A coffee, cupcake or article you saw in the Sunday papers shows that you have considered their interests/likes/dislikes and always helps set you apart.

Got a new product or service launching? Tell them about it. If you’re excited about it, it’s likely that they will be interested too. The same goes for special offers or deals, always reward loyalty.

What are your tips and tricks for effective Account Management? Please share in the comments below – we would love to hear from you.

Leave a commentBlog, Business TipsAccount Management, advice, business owner, sales retention, small business, tips

How best to gather your customers feedback

“Please take a moment to give us your feedback”; it’s the question that will make most people groan with annoyance. It’s everywhere, right? Hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, online retailers; everyone’s asking the question, but does it actually mean anything?

To a business owner, feedback is invaluable. It can tell them what they are doing right, or perhaps what areas require some immediate attention. If done properly it can be a powerful business development tool that increases client retention and sales. The tricky part is finding a sensible system that efficiently gathers feedback, without unintentionally winding up customers. Before jumping in and asking the question, think about these points:

What was good AND bad?

It’s great to hear how happy customers are and how pleased they are with a business, but there’s not much that can be learnt from these positive comments. By asking a customer what wasn’t so good will prompt them to reveal areas of potential improvements and allow a business owner to make important decisions which ultimately, could improve customer retention and increase sales.

Don’t forget your manners

If a customer takes the time to provide you with their feedback, then at the very least a business should respond to thank them for their comments and let them know that their feedback is appreciated. However this is done, the customer will appreciate knowing that their feedback has been acknowledged and that their concerns will be addressed.

Sometimes it’s OK to talk to strangers

Customers may be more inclined to open up to an anonymous person, than to someone that works within the business. The feedback will be more genuine as a customer won’t feel pressured or worried about being honest. This also enables the business to concentrate on running daily operations and time to follow up on the feedback.

Then decide how to ask:

There’s a number of different ways to ask for feedback and the key is really knowing your customers and what may be of a hindrance to them. The most successful way of asking for feedback, is a good old-fashioned telephone call and a chat. In our experience, this has the highest response rate and the customer can simply say “no thanks” if they don’t want to talk. Other options include sending an email or creating an online form on your website to direct customers to, then they can fill this in at their own leisure and at a time that suits them if they so wish to.

Alternatively, if you want to make the investment, post them a printed feedback card. Ask them to fill in the card (ideally which has been postage pre-paid) and then pop it in the post back to you.

And finally, review and promote!

Don’t let the process be wasted, use your feedback to enhance your marketing efforts. Publish the comments on your website and via social media or include them in your email campaigns. Offer to include a link back to the customers website (if they have one), as a thank you â€“ this will be beneficial to them, plus it may encourage more customers to provide their feedback.

Set aside time to go through the feedback and evaluate it to pinpoint any issues or concerns and make decisions as to how these could be addressed. It’s not the nicest thing to read your criticisms, but ultimately, it’s how a business learns to adapt and grow.

Leave a commentBlogbusiness owner, customer feedback, feedback, sales retention

Why Bother With A Sales Process

If you put the phrase “sales process” into the source of all wisdom which is Google, you will get a whole load of smartly titled materials pop up. Anything from the 7 steps of the sales process explained, 5 crucial sales process step to a bunch of serious looking diagrams. When you look it up on Wikipedia it throws this smart sounding sentence at you: “A sales process is an approach to selling a product or service. The sales process has been approached from the point of view of an engineering discipline”.

Whilst I do not doubt that reading many of these articles, examples, case studies and e-books will help improve your sales revenue I doubt that you have the time or inclination to do so. After all sales just happen don’t they? It’s all about common sense, a good product, sound reputation and a bit of luck, isn’t it?

I agree that many of the above elements are important to make sales happen (not so sure about the luck bit though). However, having a sales process can really help make sure that you keep repeating all these good strategies that help you win business and take out elements that have not worked in the past. In fact here is a whole list of things for which it can be useful:

It can help you train new team members faster
Measuring results become a lot easier
Productivity can be improved by cutting out unnecessary fluff
Additional touches can be added to improve conversion rate
It can really improve your customer retention

So the reason you should bother with a sales process is that it takes away the trial and error element of sales and helps you systemise all that in your experience has brought in sales in the past to make sure they happen more often.

Even more important is the potential to improve your customer retention. As most customers leave due to indifference, not ensuring that you demonstrate the value you offer leaves them to decide on price alone. Couple this with the fact that up selling is much easier than selling to a new prospect and you can see how important it is to have an after sale plan.

To get your sales process up and running consider the following:

Write down all steps you take between first engaging with a prospect to making a sale and ongoing communication with your clients
Emphasise the actions you take and consider writing scripts, list of actions and written communications which can be repeated
Write it with another, new member of your team point of view in mind
Get someone else to read through and comment on how easy it is to follow

So, to summarise, developing as sales process for your business is well worth the effort as it will definitely make a difference to your conversion and retention rates. Follow my suggested steps to help you make a start and develop it further based on your unique process. Most importantly, make sure you and your team follow the process once designed consistently to see the benefit.

What do you see as the biggest challenge for your business in terms of sales process?

Leave a commentMarketing, Sales, Small businessesmarketing plan, marketing process, sales process, sales retention