South Florida Web Design, Brand Management, SEO and Digital Marketing Agency

When promoting your business online, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Instead, smart business owners use marketing opportunities that are already built into the calendar year: Seasons and holidays.

Holidays are familiar and comforting to consumers. They offer reassuring milestones throughout the year. And they often dictate people’s buying behaviors. So it only makes sense to use them to promote and expand your business.

Year-Round Opportunities

Nearly every month has at least one familiar holiday that can be used to connect your business with customers:

• January — New Year’s Day
• February — Valentine’s Day
• March — St. Patrick’s Day
• April — Easter
• May — Mother’s Day
• June — Father’s Day
• July — Independence Day
• August — Labor Day
• September — Back to School
• October — Halloween
• November — Thanksgiving
• December — Christmas

Building your marketing around these and other holidays and seasons create instant connections with consumers. Depending on what type of business you own, some holidays will be more relevant than others. For example, appliance dealers often have big sales on Presidents’ Day, a holiday not relevant to most other types of businesses.

Acknowledging and celebrating holidays in your blogs and social posts is another great way to connect with people — not to mention giving you something to write about. People like it when you wish them a Merry Christmas, or a Happy Fourth of July, for example. It makes your business seem more familiar and connected with their everyday lives.

Connecting to the Calendar

Official holidays aren’t the only opportunities to promote your business. The change of seasons also has familiar and reassuring relevance for customers. Pool service providers, for example, benefit from amping up promotions in the spring and summer. Owners of vacation resorts and rental properties reach more people in the fall and winter.

Whatever kind of business you own, there’s a holiday and season for you. All you need to do is find it.

Every business owner has felt it at one point or another: They are only one of the thousands of other similar businesses offering the same types of products to the same pool of prospective customers. So how can you distinguish your business from all the rest?

Well, it starts with taking action. Nothing comes from nothing. If you fail to try to differentiate your business, failure is your only option. Literally.

But the good news is that it’s possible to make your business unique, special, and appealing to customers at the expense of your competitors. All it takes is the help of an experienced, professional branding partner — like Lytron
Strategic.

20 Years and Counting

At Lytron Strategic, we recently celebrated our 20th anniversary of helping small businesses just like yours make their mark in a crowded marketplace. We’ve transformed business owners who were previously frustrated with their bland, non-differentiated business image into flourishing, strident brands that instantly appeal to customers worldwide.

Based in Fort Lauderdale but working with clients nationwide and even beyond, our skilled and experienced branding professionals will design, implement, and manage branding strategies that are uniquely suited to your business. And we get the results you want: Whether it’s enhanced return on investment, lead generation, reputation management, or all of the above!

Reliable and Experienced

At Lytron Strategic, our track record speaks for itself. With more than 1,050 completed projects and consistent five-star ratings among our clients, we are the 100% results-driven strategic branding professionals you need to take your business to the next level and beyond.

So stop thinking of yourself as a little fish in a big pond. With the help of Lytron Strategic, now you can get the consulting, brand strategy, internet marketing, and business digitization your business needs to be that pond’s only fish that matters.

Does your business need a mascot? This is typically an original character that represents some element of your business. When used properly, a company mascot creates an instant connection between your business and your customers in a positive and meaningful way.

Lots of different businesses have highly effective mascots. Planter’s Peanuts has Mr. Peanut. M&Ms has an ever-expanding world of M&M characters. The Poppin’ Fresh Doughboy has been used in advertising for Poppin’ Fresh biscuits for generations.

Like all successful business mascots, each of these has a direct and meaningful connection with the products they promote. Less successful mascots — like “The Noid” from Domino’s Pizza — can confuse and repel customers and ultimately become more of a liability than a benefit.

Creating a Mascot

Most business mascots are created by a creative team that includes graphic designers and marketers. To work with customers, they need to be appealing, memorable, and connected with the product in some way.

For example, if you own a plumbing business your company mascot needs to have something to do with plumbing. It probably shouldn’t simply be a cute animal or cartoon character because people won’t understand what that has to do with your business. It’s also a good idea to avoid company mascots that are in any way controversial, including those based on racial or ethnic stereotypes or overly sexualized.

Think It Through

Your mascot is going to be associated with your business forever, whether you want it to or not. So it’s important that you fully think through the consequences of introducing it to your customers. Think about how people will perceive your mascot a year from now, a decade from now, and far into the future.

A well-planned and designed business mascot can help bring more people to your business for many years to come.

Differentiating your business from your competitors in the marketplace is essential. If customers discern little to no difference between what you do and what everybody else does, it’s going to be practically impossible to attract new customers or retain existing ones.

The key is the figure out why your business is better than everybody else’s, then promote that difference in your branding, marketing, and everyday practice.

Good, Better, Best

There are probably lots of reasons why people should choose your business over everybody else. Your job is to simply identify them and then transform them into selling points.

It could be the quality of your products or services. Or it may be price or perceived value. Or it could be something as simple as the power of your personality or professional reputation. But whatever it is, that needs to be the centerpiece upon which the rest of your marketing and branding pivots.

That’s because there are lots of people doing the same thing you are in the marketplace right now. New customers aren’t going to be able to find you if they can’t see you among your competitors. And existing clients aren’t going to remain loyal if you don’t give them any reason to keep coming back.

Identify and Target

Often, business owners know why they are better than their competition but they take it for granted that their customers understand why. This is usually a mistake. To keep growing — or even just stay where you are — business owners need to constantly and continually remind prospective and existing customers just what it is that makes them the preferred choice within their market.

Effective branding and marketing focus on what businesses do better than everybody else. Identify what that is for your business and you can win over customers before they choose your competitors.

Does your business have a personality? Of course, it does! Your business’s personality is likely similar to your own. But it also has its own unique features depending on what types of products and services you offer, where you are located, and a number of other factors.

One of the easiest ways to understand your business’s personality is to match it to an existing archetype. These are personality types that psychologically link your business to specific personality factors and include categories like the Sage,  the   Explorer, the Outlaw, the Magician, and many others.

Your Business Archetype

Understanding which archetype is most akin to your business’s personality can streamline the road to your success. It can tell you what type of customers are attracted to your business, what types of marketing and promotions are going to be most effective, and which are the fastest and easiest ways to make genuine connections with new customers that lead to long-term loyalty relationships.

Lytron Strategic offers a free quiz that lets you discover the archetype that most closely matches your business’ personality. By answering a few simple questions, in just a few minutes you can gain more insight into your business and get real answers to important questions that can pave the way toward your success.

Roadmap to Reality

Your archetype is an important factor in planning critical elements of your marketing and branding. When you understand how the average person perceives

your business, you can play to your strengths and exceed people’s expectations. This makes it easier for people to want to keep coming back to your products or services again and again.

And it all begins with taking our FREE business personality test. Your business has nothing to lose and everything to gain. So let’s discover your business’s personality archetype together right now!

Like it or not, you are the face of your business and that’s exactly how people like it.

Most people want to associate a person with a business. When you use your image on your business’s marketing materials, collateral, and even packaging it makes it easier for customers to make genuine connections. They are more likely to trust your business when there is a real person behind it. Putting your name and face on the products and services you offer tells prospective customers you stand behind what you offer. That makes them more willing to believe in your business, too.

Goodbye Anonymity

As the owner of a business, you have to get used to the idea that you are something of a public figure. Using yourself to promote your enterprise is the fastest and most effective way to get people’s trust. It offers a fast track to creating the effective branding you need to promote your business.

People want to believe in your business. And they are more likely to do that when they can put a name and a face on it. Namely, your name and your face.

Perfect Examples

Think about the biggest and most successful businesses in the world today. Even though each of those businesses has hundreds or even thousands of employees, it’s usually just one person that you think of when you think about that company.

Apple had Steven Jobs (and now Tim Cook). Tesla has Elon Musk. Facebook has  Mark Zuckerburg. Your business has you. Get used to the idea of living in a fishbowl because the bigger your business gets, the more people will associate you with the things your business does. And that’s just good business.

So if you are shy or self-conscious about being the face of your business, get over it.

The most important element of branding is consistency. Your company’s brand needs to offer the same message, tone, even color schemes and fonts on every piece of collateral you offer — from websites to brochures to print advertising to signage.

Customers are easily confused. So when you blend your branding or offer anything less than consistent messaging, it’s going to deteriorate the overall effectiveness and reduce your overall reach. But when you offer consistent branding across every platform, it will be both inviting and nurturing for prospective customers, making it easier for them to make genuine connections with your business, your products, your services, and you.

Successful Branding

Look at the companies that have had the most successful branding. For example, Apple computers have had essentially the same logo, used the same color schemes and fonts, and offered the same messaging to customers since the 1980s with only minimal upgrades to adjust to modern tastes. But people still consistently connect with the brand because its both familiar and meaningful to them today.

Similarly, companies like Ford, Coca-Cola, Kitchen Aid, Dyson, and others have projected essentially unchanged branding for decades and still attract customers new and old. In every case, they have found something that worked and stuck with it in the long run to great results. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

Lytron Strategic

If your business has found a successful brand that customers are attracted to, Lytron Strategic can help keep it consistent across multiple platforms — in both the virtual realm in the real world. And if you are still developing your brand, we can help you find one that will stand the etest of time.

Consistency is the key to successful branding. Once you discover a brand that people can make genuine connections with, it pays to stick with it.

Have you ever heard the term “reverse engineering”? It refers to the process of figuring out how something works in order to replicate it for yourself.

For example, let’s say Ford wants to design an electric vehicle that is comparable to the popular Tesla EV sedan. Their engineers might begin by examining a Tesla and discovering what makes it so appealing to buyers, then designing their own unique vehicle based on their findings.

In a weird way, internet marketing works the same way. If you want a successful brand, product campaign, or another online outcome, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Instead, find something that works and then use it as a model for yoiur own strategy.

Work Backwards

It helps to work backward. What is the outcome you want? It could be more site visits, a larger customer base, more customer loyalty, or all of the above. The next step is to find an existing company that already has what you want. It could be in your industry or in a line of business completely unrelated to what you do.

Once you find a successful company that is getting the kind of results you want, reverse engineer their success to understand how they got there. Then all you need to do is replicate those steps by applying them to your business, making the necessary adjustments along the way, and you can achieve your goal relatively quickly.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Businesses model their success on other companies’ success all the time. It offers a fast track to success by building on what others already have done.

In the Bible, it says, “There is nothing new under the sun.” So even in the earliest times, people understood the benefits of picking the best elements of other people’s work and applying them to their own. Reverse engineering the successful results of an existing business offers a great starting point for your own campaigns.

Sometimes the way to measure the success of a website is simple: The visitor takes the desired action, such as clicking through to another page, signing up for a mailing list, or buying a particular product or service.

But for other web pages, success can be more esoteric. So how can you tell whether your website has achieved its objective when there is no obvious desired action? The answer is threefold: Time spent, visitor engagement, and sharing.

Time Spent

The amount of time the average visitor spends on your pages is a more critical engagement measurement than the number of visitors. That’s because many people are going to find your web pages by mistake, will click off immediately after landing there or will be disappointed by your content.

But when the average time visitors spend on your pages is higher, it shows they have found something of value, whether it’s your content, your images, or simply your brand.

Visitor Engagement

Another critical measurement is visitor engagement. Once people find your web pages, what do they do there? Do they spend time reading your text, looking at your images, scrolling through your products, or some other desired action?

Successful websites offer easy, inviting visitor engagement opportunities so people spend more time on the page, develop positive feelings about the brand, and come away with a desire for further engagement.

Sharing

The ultimate measurement tool is the number of shares you get from your web pages. Companies spend a lot of time and energy encouraging people to share their pages with their family, friends, and most importantly their social media contacts.

The reason for this is obvious: When people share your pages, they can go exponentially viral. Making it easy for people to share links to your page to their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media accounts is essential for your business’s success.

It’s often hard for business owners to understand how their companies are actually perceived by their customers and people in general.

There’s a kind of near-sightedness that comes with sitting in the driver’s seat. You are simply too close to your operations to have the kind of unbiased, non-emotional viewpoint of your brand. Fortunately, that’s where brand research comes into play.

Brand Research

As one of the leading brand consultants in South Florida. Lytron Strategic focuses on brand research as the starting point for collaborating with any new client. Not until you can understand how people truly perceive your company — if they are aware of it all – can you make decisions that strengthen the emotional bonds necessary to develop long-term, profitable customer relationships.

Our research team can quickly and accurately assess the state of your brand in the marketplace right now: What share of potential customers are aware of your business? What kind of emotions do they associate with it? How likely are they to engage with your products or services? What brand loyalty do they have?

Only when you understand where you have been can you accurately plan a path to where you want to go. Brand research is the first step in understanding your brand so that you can reinvent it the way you want it to be.

Lytron Strategic

From there, Lytron Strategic can collaborate with you to build on the positive things people think about your business and convert any negative connotations into positive ones. With your direction, we can then implement highly-effective, transformative branding initiatives that will build loyalty, expand market share, and create long-term customers who will be ambassadors for your brand to their family, friends, and social media contacts.

The way people feel about your brand today doesn’t have to be the way they feel about it tomorrow. With the help of Lytron Strategic, you can reinvent your brand any way you want to.