We’ve just put up a new blog-post on our sister-site about all of the wonderful benefits of hero-content.
Benedetto
Benedetto is an enthusiastic creative and business person.
His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft – A Design & Branding Agency based in the heart of Glasgow.
He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.
Shameless plug alert!!
Sorry just this once, we’re going to go down the slightly more direct route.
We’ve finally got our working service list and landing pages together for The Entrepreneurs Loft.
Check them out…
Brand Marketing
https://entrepreneursloft.co/brand-marketing
Marketing Strategy
https://entrepreneursloft.co/marketing-strategy
Marketing Support
https://entrepreneursloft.co/marketing-support
Brand Strategy
https://entrepreneursloft.co/brand-strategy
Brand Culture
https://entrepreneursloft.co/brand-culture
Social Media Marketing
https://entrepreneursloft.co/social-media-marketing
The Entrepreneurs Loft is the big brother/sister of the loft, a new agency-offering exclusively supporting the growth journeys of High-Growth Founders, Leaders & Entrepreneurs.
In-line with our lightweight approach – everything’s pretty minimal for now, used as much for learning as it is for gaining business, will almost certainly be improved in due course (yes we will add some pictures & graphics) but most importantly done, out there and hopefully strong enough to get this bit of the job done. For Now!!
Let us know your thoughts?
All comments welcome…
Benedetto
Benedetto is an enthusiastic creative and business person.
His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft – A Design & Branding Agency based in the heart of Glasgow.
He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.
Working with High-Growth Founders, Leaders & Entrepreneurs has always been one of the most enjoyable, rewarding and fulfilling parts of our journey at the loft – over the years we’ve been lucky to help high growth companies and impactful leaders in technology, software, food and drink, charity organisations. The work is always challenging, tight for time and a little chaotic but as mentioned it really does help us to bring the best out of ourselves…
The Entrepreneurs Loft is a new sub-brand offering created by the loft to serve High-Growth Founders, Leaders & Entrepreneurs – to help them build businesses of scale with fast, imaginative and a completely personalised service. We’ve taken everything we’ve learned in 10 years in business, all our wins, all our losses and most importantly the lessons we’ve learned along the way and packaged them to create a unique service.
We can’t wait to share more about The Entrepreneurs Loft but for now, this is the link to the new microsite. https://entrepreneursloft.co
Drop us a line, let us know your thoughts and as always, if there is anything we can help with – please don’t hesitate to let us know?
Benedetto
Benedetto is an enthusiastic creative and business person.
His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft – A Design & Branding Agency based in the heart of Glasgow.
He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.
‘Making Every Penny of Money & Every Second of Time Count’
Throughout the years, it’s been our mission to make sure that our clients (and ourselves for that matter) maximise every single bit of time and money we’ve got when taking on creative projects… Exceeding expectations is always the goal, here are a couple of quick pointers on how we do this.
1. Be Unashamedly Commercial
Sometimes we’re bombarded with choice – what kind of project? Website updates, infographics, social campaigns, etc. Do we enhance what we have or start again? At the loft, we start with a budget, write a list of activities and then prioritise the ones that deliver the most benefit first . The more commercially valuable a project, the more bought-in the management team will be and the more you’ll enjoy the process.
2. Being Organised Delivers Better Results
If you’re having quality case-studies written by a professional copy-writer, have them spend a tiny bit more time re-formatting the content for your social channels. If your photographer is on-site doing individual pics of the team for the website – again see if you can have those pics re-formatted for social media, for brochures, or even for future press-releases, etc… Also, when you’ve got a professional on-site look to get as many activities as possible in one visit – your provider’s set-up and travel times will eat into your creative budget so best to take a full-day packed with great activities to get more high-quality content than 2 x half-days, etc… Just make sure you provide a good lunch and lots of good coffee. However, and this is a big proviso, this is all dependant on you being organised from the outset, so every time you’re engaging a creative professional or agency. Think what else their time could be used to give additional value. In all honesty, good providers should be making you aware of these value-adds beforehand.
3. Become Invaluable To Your Provider.
The company that can give more work to one agency, one photographer, one designer, etc will undoubtedly become more valuable to that provider which should allow you to command better rates or terms.
4. Direct is Fine
Seriously. Most creatives love working with decisive, no-nonsense types of clients that know exactly what they want and who may even be quite blunt with their feedback. Almost, the yin to their yangs. It saves so much time for everybody involved. I’m not saying be deliberately mean but clear about what you’re looking for.
5. Fast Deadlines
Fast deadlines are wonderful for maximising efficiency – everybody just has to be focussed, concentrated and on their game from the get-go. Also, most good creative providers are usually quite happy to know that there is a deadline to protect against spec creep and therefore their profit margins. However, proceed with caution, be reasonable with your requests and consider using this tactic sparingly. There is a line and it’s best not to cross it – you’ll know from the provider’s reaction when you’re close.
6. Ask For Reference Images Or Even Sketches
If you’re not entirely certain of what you want, then simply ask the agency/creative provider to take a very small amount of time to provide some reference examples from their folio, some other examples from other providers or even a quick series of sketches, etc… This will help you to more quickly understand what you want, respect your relationship and to de-risk the project for both yourself and the provider.
Just six quick tips from many years maximising creative budgets for our clients and ourselves.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Benedetto
Benedetto is an enthusiastic creative and business person.
His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft – A Design & Branding Agency based in the heart of Glasgow.
He is thrilled to manage a great team, work with brilliant clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.
More pings from the contact form, unexpected calls from new clients, offers of collaboration, bigger re-orders, greater recognition, fresh possibilities, new opportunities, big wins, small wins and best of all – quick wins… (A must for any great marketing strategy.)
Quick wins are good for the soul – they give little jolts of excitement, fresh doses of motivation and much needed vindication. They help to build crucial momentum for those big and lofty goals you’re chasing.
At the loft we get determined, sometime obsessive about the tiny wins – those little momentum shifters that get everything moving – one new customer, one more enquiry, one more phone call, one more view on social. We know those tiny wins compound over time and deliver real value.
Over many years, we’ve developed countless super lean action plans (these are our kinds of marketing strategy) – single pages of A4, presented like scrap-book pages, put together in an hour or two, presented in about 15 minutes, approved, put into action and delivering value for the client in a matter of days.
No days lost to unnecessary consultancy, no time lost on laborious presentations, no 22-point strategic plans and no Return-On-Investment that is so far into the future you lose interest.
What’s brilliant about the leaner approach is that it gives the client a quick win, some immediate value, a reason to get excited – something to build on. Brilliant for people that are time-poor (almost anybody scaling a company) and most of all – their success stimulates new and more exciting ideas giving everybody something to build on.
More weighty plans will always have a place but we’re big believers in keeping it light, being a bit more outcome-focussed and getting as much early momentum as possible.
“Go as far as you can, when you get there, you’ll see how to go farther…”
Brilliant for rapid growth with brand, marketing and creative services. If you have ideas in mind or would like to chat to us, give us a shout, we’d love to hear from you…
Benedetto
Benedetto is an enthusiastic creative and business person.
His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft – A Design & Branding Agency based in the heart of Glasgow.
He is thrilled to manage a great team, work with brilliant clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.
Useful Links
Very little matches the sheer thrill, excitement and emotion of start-up entrepreneurship – backing yourself to do something special, taking a chance on a new product/service, winning those first customers, creating teams with little or no experience, building systems, exploring new paths, finding their limitations – all done at pace, usually done with a fluctuating bank balance and fluctuating sleep patterns too. I have a serious respect for anybody who has been able to build a business from nothing into something sustainable and of scale- which leads me to Undercover Billionaire.
Undercover Billionaire is a programme which explores all of the above and so much more. Released in the United States by Discovery, where they send an entrepreneur to an unknown place, take away their identity, their contacts, their wealth, etc and give them an old phone, a truck and $100. They have to take on an alias name and are tasked with creating a $1,000,000 business in just 90 days. This second season sees three incredible entrepreneurs take up the challenge – tech investor Monique Idlett, real-estate developer and designer Elaine Culotti and The Founder of the 10X Movement – Grant Cardone.
Safe-to-say, it is a brilliant watch, I don’t spend much time in front of the TV but I’ve already been through this series a couple of times. There is just so much to learn from three entrepreneurs who are well past the start-up phases of their careers do what they do best – the sophisticated-yet-genuine way that Monique is able to build relationships with others, her ability to plan and create value too, the just awe-inspiring drive, determination and can-do attitude of Elaine Culotti who also possesses something rare and special in the way she puts together teams of people who just love her despite her pushing them all to their absolute limits. Finally, Grant Cardone, the reason I got into the show in the first place, Mr10X’s salesmanship is definitely something to admire as well as his infectious enthusiasm and ability to deliver. Without giving too much away, all three of them achieve something spectacular not only with the businesses they build but the relationships they create throughout the process.
We’ve had entrepreneurship programmes on the telly for a while now but there is definitely something quite special about Undercover Billionaire. All three of these outstanding individuals are tasked with the challenge to see ‘if the American Dream is still alive and well in the 21st century.’
What you see is that although they each have unique talents – there is nothing there that can’t be learned and done by any/all of us – Undercover Billionaire, well worth a watch…
Benedetto
Useful Links
Watch Undercover Billionaire >>>
<<< The Loft’s Entrepreneurial Approach
Benedetto is an enthusiastic creative and business person.
His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft – A Design & Branding Agency based in the heart of Glasgow.
He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.
Each and every day this week, we are answering frequently asked questions people have about their brands… (Branding FAQs.)
Today’s question is…
Question – 4
Creating a brand is obviously an important part of business so how much should I spend on my brand?
Our Answer
Ha ha, one of our favourite questions – just like the chicken and egg conversation – what comes first a budget or a price?
We usually like to get things moving at the loft so we give costings pretty quickly after an initial enquiry. In all honesty, branding work can range from the hundreds to the thousands of pounds and much more for larger companies. There are also providers at all ends of the spectrum so there are no limits to what can be spent.
However, creating a brand should not be expensive. A lot of the character of a great brand comes from the culture of the company. The experience your customers or staff have on a daily basis – how people are greeted, how durable is the product or service itself, the quality of the after-sales process, does the company follow up well if there is a problem, etc, etc.
Each of these brilliant basics are just as impactful as great brand/marketing communications and they are completely free.
With regards to how much you should spend?
Spend whatever you are comfortable spending. You’ll know deep down how much certain things should cost and what your own budget is.
As mentioned above, you’ll find providers at all ends of the spectrum, don’t risk too much on an isolated project and look to capitalise on those moves that are delivering you results – be it a social campaign, regular website updates or some kind of video podcast, etc..
That way, a truly exceptional ROI is there for the taking.
As always, if you’d like some more information or ideas, please don’t hesitate to contact us…
Benedetto
Benedetto is an enthusiastic creative and business person.
His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft.
He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.
<<< To see more of the loft’s brand solutions
For more information on brand-building by Benedetto >>>
Branding FAQ’s (Previous Questions…)
Yes, we are frequently asked questions on branding, website design, social media communications, etc – all the ins and outs of this wonderfully interesting subject – so we thought we’d wrap up some of the answers we generally give into a series of short posts.
These are our Branding FAQs.
Here goes…
Question – 1
We know branding is important, we hear about it a lot, we want to create a stronger brand and presence for our organisation but we just have no idea where to begin.
With Branding, Where Do I Start?
Our Answer
What a great question!
Start by working out what you want to do with your business first. Let your brand serve your business and not the other way around…
What do you want your business to achieve? More sales from existing clients? Attraction of new customers? Attraction of staff members? Improved reputation in the marketplace? Improved perceived value of your products/services? Something else?
The clearer you can be with the desired outcomes, the easier it will be to create ideas that boost your business and therefore your brand. You will also be in a position to give a much clearer brief to your creative/marketing agency and therefore help them more to help you.
To give a little more context, here are a few real-life examples, from clients we’ve helped in the past.
A software company we worked with for many years was able to increase their sales with existing customers by sending out short little E-mail shots introducing them to new features of the software they were already using. By helping their operators to use their existing packages better, more people in the office started to use their software and licenses-per-customer increased significantly.
We’ve worked with countless companies and been able to help them attract new customers with just a few simple updates to their website. Small additions such as good testimonials on the home-page, less burdensome enquiry forms and a clear telephone number somewhere visible on the site. Each of these micro-details helping to transform the number of enquiries and therefore number of new customers gained by our client.
Finally, we’ve been able to help several manufacturing companies increase the perceived value of their products by simply creating and sharing high-quality, effective art-directed photography of their products. Photography which showcases their products in their best lights, being used by customers and presented in an eye-catching and seductive way. All factors which help increase the average sale value, particularly from new customers for those manufacturing companies.
Once clear on the outcome – the answers can be incredibly imaginative – sales promotions, small product giveaways, E-Books, parts of an E-Book, simple website updates, social campaigns, case-studies, bespoke newspapers, etc, etc…
At the loft, we always believe in spending a little more time in defining the end-outcome, keeping the solution light and manageable, then creating something which is easily repeatable once successful.
Helping business owners and organisation leaders to create stronger, more effective and commercially viable brands.
Question – 2
How do I make my brand stand out from the crowd?
Our Answer
Another great question and one with a bit of a historical context. The whole concept of branding was created by farmers branding their cattle to show ownership and to distinguish them from the others. In time, the profession has evolved, but the idea of differentiating your product, service or company remains the same.
The best way to help your brand stand out is to work out what is special about your product/service/organisation and celebrate that difference in the most effective way possible using all possible marketing channels.
If you’re a printer that is always on hand for clients with last-minute deadlines – find ways to communicate and celebrate your accessibility.
If you’re an accountancy firm with sector-specific expertise in one area – consider ways to celebrate this enhanced wisdom and knowledge.
If you’re an online retailer that sells rare and ‘hard to find collectable’ products – then this is the perfect place to start when crafting your message.
If yours struggling for answers for this one – ask your customers/staff or write a list – going on a journey of discovery about what is great about your own products, service, company, organisation or brand is great fun.
Question – 3
I keep hearing about Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc, etc. How can these help me to build my brand. Where does social media fit in?
Our Answer
Another Great Question!!
All these channels are brilliant for giving you the opportunity to show off your brand to lots of new people as well as communicate with people you already know. As well as basic products and services, you can show off more of who you are, what you do and how you do it. All great mini brand-builders.
The options with social are endless – present a little bit about your team-members, showcase different ways people use your products, communicate which social causes you support, share customer testimonials, fun pics of the office, name-check people you are working with, etc…
Whether it is words, pictures or video – each and every interaction gives you the opportunity of another positive engagement with your customers, staff and others too – helping you to build and strengthen the way people perceive your brand.
As always, if you’d like some ideas in how to put this into practice, please don’t hesitate to contact us…
Benedetto
Why ‘Hero Content’ can multiply the effectiveness of your brand and marketing actions.
With marketing and branding activities – we’re always looking for actions that make the biggest impact for the least effort – E-Mail Campaigns, Videos, Podcasting, Blogging, Print, Old-Fashioned Advertising, etc, etc. Each of these will help us to persuade more people to do business with us, each of these can be honed to deliver outstanding results over time, each has their own specific types of benefit.
However, over the years at the loft, we’ve found that to deliver real and lasting impact – it is less a question of what but how.
We’ve learned that to create lasting change – what you produce must be able to hold somebody’s attention, should be high-quality and be something that lasts too. ‘Hero-Content’ might be a new phrase to many but creating it may be one of the biggest game-changers for any one of your marketing efforts.
Hero-Content is a higher quality of communication that can be used in a range of different places, in a range of different ways, it can be scaled up, used repeatedly and is endlessly flexible. It tends to be super high-impact, created by a specialist and can be anything from a high-quality infographic to a short 30-second video sound-bite to an effective ad. It can even be a paragraph of text successfully describing your company’s top products or services.
The advantages to your company’s marketing are many, however the real benefits of hero-content to rapidly-growing companies are more personal – having fresh, creative and high-quality creative on-file will save your Marketing Director many a sleepless night with tight deadlines looming fast. (The bi-product of any successful and rapidly-growing company.) It removes the pressure from creatives under tight time constraints and if used properly will give a level of brand consistency and professionalism that can only be advantageous to your company’s creative efforts.
Over the years, we’ve created high-quality hero-content for a number of companies – high impact infographics which industrial companies have used in brochures, websites and even sales powerpoints, abstract sub-brand identities for software companies, photographic imagery for professional firms, etc. Over the years, we’ve been an ‘On-Demand Agency’ with many rapidly growing companies and we’ve learned much about creating and using hero-content first-hand.
Here are a few things we’ve learned..
– We recommend creating hero-content as part of a bigger brand/marketing project – a company re-brand, a website, a brochure or formal campaign.
– It really should be done by a specialist freelancer or agency. Please make sure you agree to have full access to all creative outputs afterwards.
– Once you have agreement on a style that works – it is best to get as many variations from your agency/freelancer as possible – like most innovation projects – the first example takes the longest time to create. Afterwards, with a formula in place, it gets easier and quicker.
– And finally – although we’ve created lots of amazing stuff over many years to tight deadlines at the loft, beautiful creative that is still used many years after it was first produced. It really is best to take a tiny step back and give your freelancer/agency a little more time to get this spot on.
The results will be compounded, I promise…
To see more examples of ‘Hero Content’ as created by the loft.
Check out…
Altia-ABM, A Creative Partnership >>>
Scottish Leather Group, Celebrating Sustainability >>>
As always, if you would like a hand then please don’t hesitate to contact us>>>.
For more information on ‘Hero-Content’ >>>
Over the best part of a decade, the loft provided creative services to an organisation called Altia-ABM. A fast-growing international group that develops smart software solutions to support criminal investigations and manage covert operations. Formerly, Altia Solutions & ABM Intelligence, they are an exceptional organisation with an incredibly capable team and several strong product/service offerings. We loved every moment of our ‘Creative Partnership’ which we’ve summarised with the short PDF document below, overflowing with software marketing tips, we hope you enjoy reading it as much as we’ve enjoyed producing it.
A short guide outlining our 7-8 year ‘Creative Partnership’ with Altia-ABM. Full of great software marketing tips.
For more on software marketing check out ‘Marketing for Software Companies: 3 Software Marketing Strategies to Use’ or ‘7 Key Marketing Strategies for Technology Companies.’
Hero content is definitely ‘a must-have’ when it comes to managing lots of creative projects, getting out a strong message, locking-in consistency and doing so under tight time pressures.
What is this fancy phrase ‘hero-content,’ I hear you ask…?
Well, it can be anything from high-quality photographs, infographics, videos or even text. The big difference is that it is something that is exceptionally well-finished and personal to you or your organisation. Hence the ‘HERO’ part of the title. It’s developed to showcase what is best about a product, service or even an organisation and most importantly it is readily available on-file and can be dragged and dropped, copied and pasted or inserted into just about any marketing/sales/creative communication you’re working on. Most importantly, it can be done so at speed…
Hero content can include many different things, a sharp and well-finished set of icons selling the benefits of a product, art-directed photography which captures the spirt of an organisation, a professional and up-to date set of portrait pics of the team, an infographic of a metric you’re proud off, it can even be a well-written paragraph of what your company does. (Particularly useful for new-starts that are constantly having to raise investment.)
When it comes to creating hero-content…
– We recommend creating it as part of a wider project – a website, a brochure, etc.
– It is the kind of thing that can be done by anybody but should really be done by a specialist. Make sure you agree full access to the creative and future rights afterwards.
– Once you have agreement on a style that works – it is best to get as many iterations from your provider as possible – like most innovation projects – the first example takes the longest time to create. Afterwards it’s all downhill from there…
– And finally – although we’ve created lots of amazing stuff over many years to tight deadlines at the loft, beautiful creative that is still used many years after it was first produced. (Some examples below…) It really is best to take a tiny step back and give your freelancer/agency a little more time to get this spot on. The results will be compounded, I promise…
As always, if you would like a hand then please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Benedetto
<<< For more examples of how we’ve used hero-content in the past.