BRAND CREATIVITY FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

How can you build an emotional connection with your customers? Those that do will be well rewarded with loyalty.

As a small business, you may have decided to suspend your marketing spend and keep your powder dry amid uncertainty about the economic recession. Though best practice indicates that brands should continue to spend through difficult times in order to position themselves for recovery when consumers start spending again, the COVID-19 recession is understandably forcing small businesses to make difficult choices. *

So What Can You Do? Get Creative!

Engage consumers in new, more helpful ways. Consumers are, for the most part, simply not interested in pushiness at the moment: they want security and positivity from brands.

Creativity can have measurable effect on your results. The more creative your work, the less money you have to spend in promoting it. Create campaigns that your customers want to be part of and share with their friends and communities.

Even before COVID-19, there is considerable evidence that investing in long-term brand-building is shrinking as more and more budgets are directed to short-term sales activation and maintaining a presence on social media. As a result, it seems more and more difficult to identify memorable brand campaigns. Why? We are not trying hard enough to entertain our audience.

Examples To Follow

There are some examples of big brands in Ireland that have done it well over recent years. How can you learn from them?

A Guideline To Brand Campaign Success For Small Businesses.

  1. Identify the underlying concept. Keep it simple. 
  2. Understand what emotion you want the viewer to feel.
  3. Make it personal and  relevant to today.
  4. Be ambitious, brave & creative.
  5. Ensure follow-through and consistency on all channels.
  6. Identify and benchmark the campaigns that you like.
  7. One ad or promo isn't a campaign. Back it up and build on it over time. 

* How to Market in a Downturn, Harvard Business Review 2009