March 2019 - Trident

Reasons to Still Include Print in Your Marketing Strategy

Posted on March 29, 2019 by Adam Burrage

With the steady proliferation of digital platforms, traditional media such as print often appears cast aside. Advertisement materials that promote businesses and events can be easily launched on the World Wide Web. However, despite the availability of various digital options, creative design agencies believe that traditional marketing methods are still as effective. Below are some of the reasons why print media can make a lasting impact with consumers.

1. More cost effective

Although digital marketing offers a number of benefits, maintaining your online presence can be expensive. On the other hand, traditional print marketing has cost-effective options. Contracting a graphic design agency to create your business cards or flyers can help your business grow significantly. The print materials they produce can be handed out strategically to prospective clients.

2. More noticeable

With the digital space getting overcrowded, you can carve out a niche by using printed materials. Publications, brochures and posters are tangible items that easily capture an audience’s attention. They can stay in offices or homes for months or even years after they are received. Its sensory appeal is something that digital screens cannot compete with.

3. More reliable

As the credibility of items online becomes more and more of an issue, print media gives a better sense of legitimacy. Before printed materials are distributed, it has to go through comprehensive fact checking to ensure that the information shared is correct. This is important nowadays as some people who produce online content have the tendency to overlook important details that must be edited.

4. Establishes branding

Creative agencies know the importance of having a well-recognised business. Producing printed publications and other materials can help establish your brand. It allows you to bring the aesthetic qualities of font, colours, images and texture that help in boosting brand recognition.

5. Targeted reach

Advertising using printed materials is a smart approach to share your business information with those who haven’t noticed your presence yet. Flyers can be distributed in areas with high foot traffic or places near your target audience. This way, you can be assured that the money invested in promotion can yield maximum returns for your business.

Trident have a team of expert print specialists who can deliver quality work on time and on budget. Please feel free to call our creative agency in Leicester on +44 (0) 1455 557766 or fill out this contact form to discuss your requirements.

Written By Adam Burrage
Managing Partner at Trident

8 reasons to have a responsive website

Posted on March 19, 2019 by Adam Burrage

The use of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets has increased rapidly and they have overtaken the desktop as the primary method of accessing the web. With users accessing the Internet via smartphones and tablets, rather than a desktop computer, the importance of having a mobile-friendly website becomes paramount.

Below I listed 8 reasons why you should have a fully responsive website:

Your competitors will probably have mobile friendly sites, which business do you think visitors will buy from when browsing on their phone.

You can reach a wider audience responsive sites make sharing content easier visitors are more likely to share you on their social platforms. Giving you more exposure.

Mobile sites rank higher with Google meaning you will appear higher in the search results an easy and free way to rank higher. If Google finds your site is hostile to mobile users you’re definitely going to lose rank.

In this instant age with short attention spans a responsive site will load quicker and keep a visitor’s attention if you have a site that takes ages to load visitors will click off in an instant. More than half your visitors will leave if your site doesn’t load in 3 seconds!

A mobile friendly site will give visitors and much better online experience a visually appealing and enjoyable interaction with your company. If navigation is easy, and the site loads easily, text is easy to read and fits well into the small screen visitors will enjoy browsing.

Customers viewing on their mobiles will have easy access to your contact details when they need them, don’t make it difficult for them to contact you.

57% of browsers would not recommend a business with a bad mobile site.

40% of browsers will turn to a competitor’s site straight after a bad mobile experience. Thank you for reading, I hope you found this blog useful!

With users accessing the Internet via smartphones and tablets, rather than a desktop computer, the importance of having a mobile-friendly website becomes paramount.

Written By Kim Burrage
Managing Director at Trident

Top 5 things you need to know about creating a great website

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Adam Burrage

Your website is often the single most important aspect of promoting your business. In an ever-evolving digital world, most businesses big or small point audiences in the direction of their website to learn more about them, whether that’s at networking events handing over your business card or through other marketing communications. After all, your website is your digital home, a place where you have the opportunity to represent your brand in its most preferred light.

In fact, most of the marketing activity you will do to promote your business, whether to generate new leads, new business or drive awareness of your services and products, will most likely drive your audience to your website. So, it’s a simple observation, but your website needs to be in top condition to represent your brand in the best way.

We know that this is easier said than done, so we’ve pulled together our top 5 tips to make your website not only look great but help make it perform better and work harder for your business. But if you just want to jump straight in and immerse yourself in creating a great website, download our Ultimate Guide which covers all the do’s and don’ts for a great performing website. It’s all there.

1. Engaging Design

When a consumer lands on your website for the first time, you want them to be impressed. After all, first impressions are very important. You don’t want to disappoint your audience with a dated or poorly designed website.

It’s important to make your homepage engaging and to the point. As soon as your audience visit, they need to know that they’ve come to the right place and that they feel comfortable there. Finding the right design that represents your business is vital, don’t try and be something you are not. If your brand is fun, make sure your website fun as well. If the business is serious, be elegant.

The design process always starts with a clear understanding of the brand and we tend to start with your why. Once you have the knowledge of what your business stands for and how you want to be perceived, then the design can begin.

2. User-friendly navigation

Looking good is great, but if your user experience is clunky and laborious, then you are going to turn off many of your visitors from exploring your website, returning for more information and certainly from recommending you to anyone else.

Ideally, you never want users to be more than two clicks away from the information they’re after. Make it easy for them to navigate and enjoy the experience on your website.

We’d always recommend making your contact details regular throughout your page so you can encourage consumers to get in touch with you if they want to learn more.

3. Memorable and relevant content

Perhaps the most important detail of your website, yet it sounds obvious to point it out. Once you peel back the layers of design and navigation, the content on your website needs to shine through. Make it relevant to your audience and present it in a memorable and engaging way.

We see lots of businesses showcase pages and pages of copy on their website thinking that their audience will read it all and leave being more informed. Wrong. Your audience has turned off. They are not interested in the granular detail of your business whilst they research you or just visiting your website for information. Be concise, punchy and creative with your information and present it in a way that is easy to digest and remember.

If you have more detailed information that is useful for your consumers, make it available in clever ways through gated content or downloadable content for your customers.

The type of content you are providing will dictate the presentation of it. Relatable imagery, videos executed in the right way and subtle animations are a great way to keep your audience engaged and will form part of your overall design that represents you and your brand.

4. Gather data and analyse it to effect

You have created a nicely designed website, that’s easy to navigate and displays engaging content (to the best of your knowledge), but what next?

Websites are ever-evolving channels of communication so you cannot afford to stand still with the content you display and the subtle tweaks you make. It’s not as fast-paced as Social Media which changes from hour-to-hour (and sometimes quicker), but you need to analyse the performance of your website regularly and evaluate your next steps.

A popular (and free!) tool to use for this, is Google Analytics. With this, you can track and analyse website traffic, page visits, onsite behaviour, conversions and a host of other features that help make your website more efficient. Gathering this type of data gives you real value and insight into how your website is performing and where to make your improvements. You may see that people are hitting your homepage and bouncing straight off which in itself tells you that your homepage is not as appealing as perhaps you thought. So messaging may need to be adjusted, layout considered.

In the end, data and knowledge is the key to maintaining and improving website performance.

5. Automated behavioural communication

And finally, our last tip encourages a more strategic and rounded approach to improving your website performance as a communication tool. Too often we see a company who sets up their website with the sole purpose to display service/product content and represent the business at arm’s length. Yes, they offer contact details but what happens then? How do they convert visitors or drive further engagement? How do you make your website more than just a hub of information?

Including automated triggers on your website is a great way to communicate to your audience, gather further detail of your website’s performance and tailor further activity towards your prospects.

As an example, you could include simple questions in your contact form to learn a little more about your new prospect than just their name and their email address. Asking “what service are they most interested in discussing?” will give you a valuable piece of information that you can use to continue to communicate with them around a focused subject that is relevant to their interest in your business. They may be interested to read that blog you posted recently, or a new product you’ve recently launched or it may be useful to send them that case study that represents their request perfectly. It becomes more personal to their needs and you, in turn, become more targeted with your marketing activity.

At Trident, we believe that marketing success is built on a solid foundation of research, insight and strategic knowledge to help deliver results. By working with our clients, we pinpoint key business issues and combine smart strategy, detailed planning with great creative.

Not only do we apply this ethos to our website projects but across all the services we offer within the creative, digital and print requirements of our clients, taking projects from the very start of concept through design and into delivery, covering digital build or print production.

If you would like to understand more about our agency or contact us to discuss how we can help you achieve results with your website, contact our team directly on 01455 557 766.

Written By Adam Burrage
Managing Partner at Trident

The Neuroscience Behind Why Mail Cuts Through

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Adam Burrage

It’s long been documented that printed flyers, direct mail, brochures and banners, in the physical world, can create a longer lasting impression than digital communications. Particularly with people spending over 24 hours a week online as we’re constantly bombarded with email, digital ads, social media – everyone vying for your attention. With this in mind, brands are having to work harder and harder to be remembered. This is one of our key messages as a business, there’s no point putting out messaging if it’s not valuable, or memorable.

Until recently, there wasn’t a huge amount of science or research behind the effects of mail to reinforce your decision and spend with mail. Traditionally the only measurement you could rely on was response rates from door drops or direct mail, which handed initiative over to digital communications as the preferred choice. That is until our friends over at the Royal Mail conducted a study into the neuroscience behind mail. It’s something that I found really fascinating and something that I thought would be valuable to readers of our blog.

So how did they go about it?

In short, mail was remembered more than emails and social media advertising. The study found that mail was processed for longer in the part of the memory that looks after long term memory, meaning that it was more likely to be retained later. The messages that are remembered more are also more likely to spur action later on in time.

Mail was remembered 49% more than email and 35% more than social media advertising.

What was the outcome?

Ideally, you never want users to be more than two clicks away from the information they’re after. Make it easy for them to navigate and enjoy the experience on your website.

We’d always recommend making your contact details regular throughout your page so you can encourage consumers to get in touch with you if they want to learn more.

Mail boost the effectiveness of other channels too

As someone who loves print but also sees the power of digital (and the speed at which you can measure digital communications), this next part of the study was really interesting to me.

If you send out direct mail in advance of a digital campaign, then this will actually boost the memory response when viewing social media adverts from 3.3 seconds to 4.3 seconds, suggesting that the direct mail has made the reader view the content on social more thoroughly after getting something physical in the mail. With this in mind, including direct mail with your digital campaigns could drive engagement and response rates.

Mail isn’t just for the older generation either

To further the study’s findings, the Royal Mail also found that under 35’s were equally responsive to the stimulus of mail, suggesting that digital natives would still be receptive to a relevant physical direct mail – up to 75% of under 35’s would go on to buy something from a result of door drops.

Source: Royal Mail MarketReach, The Life Stages of Mail, 2016

Is Mail For Everybody and Every Business?

Whilst there is no doubt of the effectiveness of mail as a medium, it’s not for everyone and it does have the drawback of often being considerably more expensive compared to digital. On top of this, you have the drawback of not gaining those instant measurable metrics that you can from an email or digital campaigns. That said, I think in a targetted and well-planned campaign combined with digital, print as a whole can offer much stronger results and drive your marketing objectives harder.

If anything in this blog sounds of interest and you would like to discuss, print, digital or creative services, please contact us and we’d love to hear from you.

Written By Adam Burrage
Managing Partner at Trident