A solid brand identity is essential for long-term success in today’s competitive business landscape. A unique brand identity helps differentiate you from competitors, builds customer loyalty, and ensures a lasting impression.
This detailed guide will take you through the essential steps for building a strong brand identity that engages your target audience and sets up your business for success.
Define Your Brand Strategy
Before exploring your brand’s visual elements, it’s crucial to define your brand strategy. Start by clearly articulating your mission, values, and unique selling proposition. Understand your target audience and determine what sets your business apart from competitors. This foundation will act as a guiding principle throughout the brand identity development process.
Develop a Distinctive Brand Personality
Each successful brand has a distinct personality that reflects its values and resonates with its customers. Think about the emotions and traits you want your brand to convey. Is your brand playful and lighthearted, or sophisticated and professional? Craft a brand personality that matches the preferences and aspirations of your target audience.
Create a Memorable Brand Name and Logo
Choosing the right brand name and designing an impactful logo is critical to brand identity. Your brand name should be easy to remember, pronounce, and spell. It should also convey the essence of your brand. Similarly, your logo should be visually appealing, distinctive, and reflect your brand’s personality. Contact one of our award-winning designers to ensure a polished and cohesive visual representation.
Craft a Consistent Visual Identity
Maintaining consistency is crucial for establishing a solid brand identity. To make your brand stand out, develop a visual identity system with a color palette, typography, and visual elements such as icons or patterns. These elements should be consistently used across all brand touchpoints, including your website, social media profiles, packaging, and marketing materials. This consistency helps build recognition and strengthens your brand’s presence with your audience.
Define Brand Voice and Messaging
Your brand’s voice and messaging are crucial in shaping perceptions and connecting with your audience. Determine the tone of voice that aligns with your brand personality and resonates with your target customers. Develop clear brand messaging guidelines, including key phrases, taglines, and storytelling techniques. Ensure that your messaging is consistent across all communication channels.
Build Brand Awareness Through Content Marketing
Content marketing is an effective tool for enhancing brand visibility and positioning your brand as an industry leader. Develop valuable, high-quality content for your audience, including blog posts, videos, infographics, and social media updates. Consistently share this content across relevant channels to increase brand visibility and engage with your target customers.
Foster Brand Advocacy and Engagement
Building a solid brand identity goes beyond visuals and messaging. It involves cultivating meaningful relationships with your customers. To cultivate brand loyalty, actively seek customer feedback, promptly respond to questions, and offer exceptional service. By exceeding customer expectations, you can encourage them to share their positive experiences with others. Harness the power of social media and online communities to build and maintain a dedicated customer base.
Building a Strong Brand Identity the Award-Winning Way
Building a solid brand identity is a multifaceted process that demands careful planning and consistent execution. Following this guide, you can craft a brand that connects with your audience, differentiates you from competitors, and fosters long-term customer loyalty.
Investing the time and effort into building a solid brand identity will set your business up for success in the dynamic marketplace. We are here to help and guide you through, contact our award-winning design team to ensure you’re set up for success.
A robust marketing strategy is paramount to success in today’s fast-paced and competitive business landscape. It is the driving force that elevates brands above the noise, connects them with their target audience, and generates tangible results. However, crafting and executing an effective marketing plan requires specialized expertise, creativity, and time, making it a daunting task for many businesses. This is where a reputable marketing agency comes into play, offering a wealth of knowledge and skills to propel your brand toward greatness. But with a myriad of agencies vying for your attention, how do you choose the right one?
This comprehensive guide will walk you through the key factors to consider when selecting the perfect digital marketing agency for your business. From defining your objectives and assessing their expertise to evaluating their track record and cultural fit, we leave no stone unturned to ensure you make a well-informed decision. Let’s embark on this empowering journey together and unlock the secrets to choosing the right marketing agency that will lead your brand to triumph.
Define Your Objectives: The North Star of Your Search
Before diving into the sea of marketing agencies, take a step back to define your objectives. What are your specific goals, and what outcomes do you want to achieve through marketing efforts? Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, boosting sales, or engaging a new target audience, clear objectives serve as your North Star in selecting the right agency that aligns with your vision and business goals.
Assess Their Expertise: A Master of Their Craft
Expertise is the backbone of any reputable marketing agency. Assess their knowledge and skills across various marketing channels, from content marketing and SEO to branding and web design. A top-notch agency will be well-versed in the latest marketing trends, technologies, and best practices, allowing them to craft innovative strategies tailored to your unique needs.
Evaluate Their Track Record: Proven Success Stories
Actions speak louder than words. Look for a marketing agency with a proven track record of success. If the marketing agency doesn’t have accessible social proof, you can request case studies and references to gauge their previous achievements and client satisfaction. A history of driving tangible results for businesses like yours will strongly indicate their capabilities and commitment to excellence.
Understand Their Process: From Strategy to Execution
A well-defined and transparent process is crucial in the realm of marketing, especially with branding and digital marketing agencies. Inquire about their approach to building brands, crafting marketing strategies, executing campaigns, and measuring results. A strategic and data-driven process ensures that your marketing efforts are well-structured, measurable, and adaptable to changing market dynamics.
Explore Their Creativity: A Spark of Innovation
Creativity is the heartbeat of impactful marketing campaigns. A truly outstanding agency will infuse innovative ideas into its strategies, setting your brand apart from the competition. Look for a team that can think outside the box and create captivating content and visuals that resonate with your audience.
Consider Their Cultural Fit: A Harmonious Partnership
A strong cultural fit between your brand and the marketing agency fosters a harmonious partnership. Assess their values, work ethic, and communication style to ensure seamless collaboration. An agency that understands and embraces your brand’s personality will create an authentic and compelling message that speaks directly to your audience.
Gauge Their Communication: An Open Dialogue
Effective communication is the cornerstone of any successful partnership. Evaluate the agency’s responsiveness and openness in their communication. A transparent and responsive agency will inform you of progress, promptly address concerns, and collaborate effectively to achieve your goals.
Review Their Resources: A Robust Team and Tools
A well-equipped agency can handle your marketing needs with precision and proficiency. Assess the size and expertise of their team to ensure they can cater to your specific requirements. Sometimes, a traditional agency with a large team isn’t always the best route. Many brands prefer working with boutique agencies that are specialists and offer the full white glove experience. Additionally, inquire about the marketing tools and technologies they leverage to enhance their strategies and measure performance.
Consider Their Pricing Structure: A Valuable Investment
The cost of marketing services is a significant consideration for businesses of all sizes. Evaluate the agency’s pricing structure to ensure it aligns with your budget and expected return on investment. Remember, a valuable investment in marketing can yield substantial rewards for your business when choosing the right marketing agency.
Trust Your Instinct: The Gut Feeling
Last but not least, trust your instincts. After conducting thorough research and assessments, pay attention to your gut feeling about the agency. A sense of trust and alignment with their vision can be a strong indicator that you are making the right choice for your brand’s growth.
In conclusion, choosing the right marketing agency is a pivotal decision that can significantly impact the trajectory of your business. When making an informed decision, it’s essential to define your objectives, assess expertise, evaluate track records, understand the process, explore creativity, consider cultural fit, gauge communication, review resources, and contemplate pricing structure.
By doing so, you equip yourself with the necessary tools. As you embark on this journey, trust your instinct and partner with a marketing agency that shares your vision, values, and passion for success. Together, you will conquer the marketing landscape and propel your brand toward greatness and acclaim.
AVINTIV was founded by our fearless CEO, Jon Boles, a serial entrepreneur and investor who had been dissatisfied with the agency experiences he had in the past. After investing hundreds of thousands of dollars and not finding the right fit, he was inspired to create an agency that met his needs and helped other businesses facing similar challenges. Fast forward to today, and the agency has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, helping generate hundreds of millions of dollars.
As an award-winning boutique agency, we treat our clients as partners, not just clients. We are dedicated to understanding your goals and delivering exceptional results through impactful marketing strategies.
If you want a marketing partner who genuinely cares about your success, contact us today for a complimentary strategy call, and let’s take your brand to new heights together!
If you’re a dentist or periodontist, it’s no secret that there seems to be a new dental office that opens up on every street corner now. Do you know the actual numbers, though?
In 2012, an article by Dental Economics stated, “In the last five years, competition has increased in dentistry. Seventy-five percent of dental practices have experienced production declines since the Great Recession. Many offices are in danger of continuing this trend if they do not come to terms with what it takes to grow a practice in the new dental economy.
In 2015, the United States had 195,722 practicing dentists. That’s the equivalent of having 60.9 dentists per 100,000 population.
Now that you understand the dentistry industry across the board is becoming extremely competitive let’s switch over and go over statistics from the lovely customers in the United States that use local dental services.
“77% of patients use online reviews when finding a new healthcare provider.”
It doesn’t matter what type of business you’re in; customers are looking to see reviews from other real customers. It shows social proof on the level of care and quality that your business has to offer. With something as important as finding a new local dentist, you better believe that the potential customer is researching your business and your reviews before making a call.
“75% of customers expect companies to provide a consistent experience across multiple touchpoints.”
In 2020, the majority of the potential customers that are looking to bring their business to you are researching you on multiple platforms. They’re looking at your Google reviews, Yelp reviews, website, and social media handles. They want to make sure that you’re the real deal before they bring you their business. Switching dentists or periodontists isn’t as easy as changing which restaurant you want to eat tonight.
Your online experience has to match across the board. Now is the time to tighten up all aspects of your brand, or your competition who do that well will continue to grow.
“70% of customers say technology makes it easier for them to take their business elsewhere.”
As we’ve mentioned above, with the amount of competition and level of technology we all have at our fingertips, finding a new dentist has never been easier for a potential customer. They aren’t just looking at your business; they’re researching 2-3 dentists and periodontists at the same time to find the right fit for what they’re looking for.
What is SEO?
For those of you who are reading this blog and don’t know or understand what SEO is, fear not, we’ll explain it.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of your website through organic search engine results.
For instance, anytime you type something into Google, the SERPs (search engine results pages) are showing you the closest information that you were looking for. Although there are a lot of variables on how Google shows its results, the majority of the search results on page one or two of Google have heavily optimized their SEO to be seen over their competition.
Example: You’re a Scottsdale, AZ, dentist, and your website pops up on page 40 when someone types in “Scottsdale Dentist” into Google. You decided to hire an agency to improve your SEO, and after a few months, your business now pops up on the first page of Google for “Scottsdale Dentist.” You can see how much value that would be for you. Thousands of people in Scottsdale will now know what your business is and where you’re located, which will increase website traffic and grow your top-line revenue.
Why is SEO important for dentists and periodontists in 2020?
Back in the day, customers would look in the yellow pages to look up local dentists. I’m sure you remember those days. Now, Google and SEO are the new yellow pages. If your business isn’t adequately listed or you haven’t optimized your SEO for dentists, it’s highly likely that not many new customers are finding your business online.
Referral businesses are not scalable. There will be a time when the referrals stop coming in.
When you optimize your website with SEO for dentists, and your website is popping up on the first page of Google, you’re essentially getting free traffic. If your site is optimized correctly, then a percentage of that traffic will convert into paying customers.
In this article, we’ll be going over five need to know tips on SEO for dentists and periodontists for 2020.
1. Determining the right keywords
Before beginning SEO, you want to research and learn the right keywords for your business to rank for. We would start by listing the services that you offer and follow that by the general location (city, state, local) search terms. A couple of examples would look like: Teeth Whitening, Crowns, Braces, fillings, local Scottsdale dentist, etc.
You want to make sure that you’re focusing on keywords that have the intention of working with a dentist. For instance, “at-home teeth whitening” is still teeth whitening, but that person doesn’t plan on going to a dentist. You would want to use the phrase “dentist teeth whitening near me.” You have to remember that Google’s primary goal is to provide solutions that match what the user is searching for; otherwise, it doesn’t give the user the best experience. Picking the right keywords is extremely important.
Ideally, you’ll want to have a mixture of keywords that have high search volume but also long-tail keywords that will be easier to rank for. If you try to search for “dentist” when there are 823,000 search volume, that will be much more difficult.
If you don’t know how to do proper keyword research, you can always contact us for assistance. Every successful SEO campaign should have very in-depth keyword research and planning done behind the scenes. The research dives into your brand, your competition, your customers, and carefully decide keywords and key phrases that people are searching for based on the research. The research will be able to tell what your competitors are ranking for and how much traffic is going to their sites based on each keyword. Successful campaigns will ensure that the research is utilized in both the on-page and off-page campaigns to ensure that your website will be on page one of Google for many of your selected keywords.
2. Having a well-built website with user experience in mind
One of the most important aspects of running a successful company in 2020 is having an up-to-date website with the basics that every consumer expects you to have. If you’re a dentist or periodontist with a 5+-year-old website that hasn’t been updated, you are losing thousands of dollars every single week.
Unique Website Design
In 2020, you need to stand out from all of the other dentist or periodontist websites that are out there. You have a one in one hundred chance of having each new potential customer choosing you. If your website doesn’t have a unique design or stand out, you won’t be among their top three choices.
With how many choices are out there right now, your website design, structure, colors, and layout need to match the flow and experience that your potential customers are looking for. If it doesn’t meet their needs, they’re right onto the next competitor of yours.
Avintiv Media has been named top Web Design Agency in the United States for the past two years in a row, and that comes from us understanding what customers are looking for on a website.
Responsive Design & Development
In 2018, over 58% of site visits were from mobile phones. If that alone doesn’t show you the need to have a mobile-friendly (responsive design), we go into more detail why its a necessity for 2020.
Google stated that 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing, and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead. That’s a pretty significant number.
Back in July 2019, Google switched its search engine to mobile-first indexing. Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. If your website isn’t developed for mobile, then you can expect to take a hit with your rankings while your mobile-friendly competitors start moving up the rankings.
If you’d like to find out how mobile-friendly your website is or isn’t, contact us today.
Website Speed, Performance, and Usability
The world we live in has become more and more impatient. We are all used to being able to access everything with a button press of a phone now. You can order a car, food, and anything else you’d like from your mobile phone.
If your website speed doesn’t meet the standards of what a potential customer is looking for, then they will leave your site and go to your competitor.
Google started using site speed and performance as a search ranking factor for their algorithm starting back in 2010. That means, if your website is slower than Google would like, they are going to move you lower in the rankings as they feel it will give the person searching a lousy experience. Google is a business, and they aren’t going to show off websites on page one that aren’t optimized properly as it shows the business owner doesn’t care that much.
One of our client’s Google rankings started to drastically climb up towards page one after we made significant updates to the speed of their website. The example below is after just one round of updates.
Content, Content, Content – Content is still king
Content on your website is one of the most critical aspects of your website and SEO campaign that you can do. Having the right type of content on your dentist website or periodontist website is crucial. Your website visitors want to learn more about the services that you offer and also know that you’re legit and an authority figure in your industry.
The more optimized pages of content on your website allow you to rank for even more keywords on Google. You can’t rank on page one for “Dentist in Scottsdale” unless you have content on your website or SEO campaigns that matches that description.
The majority of the dentists that we’ve been able to get on page one of Google for over 30+ keywords have over 30 pages on their website.
Each one of your services needs to have its page and go into detail explaining what you offer with that service.
For a great example of one of the service pages, we’ve built for our client, check out Malek Periodontics.
3. Enhancing On-Page SEO for Dentist Website
Before today you have probably heard the term SEO before, but a lot of you want to know, “What is on-page SEO?”
On-page SEO is the SEO work that’s done on your website and individual pages to rank higher in search engines, earning more traffic and an increase in revenue.
One of the most significant factors that Google makes as it becomes more sophisticated is relevance. How relevant is your page or content to the search query? Google doesn’t want to give its users a bad experience by showing a page that has nothing to do with what they were wanting.
Think of it like you’re at a restaurant (Google), you order a hamburger (search for local hamburger restaurant), and the server (search engine) delivers a taco (local taco restaurant). Tacos are still delicious, but it’s not what you ordered. Get the point.
Below are the areas that we would focus on for any beginners with on-page SEO.
Meta Tags
One of the most important things to consider for on-page SEO is your meta tags. Meta tags are snippets of text that describe a page’s content to Google search engines and crawlers.
Meta tags provide more relevance syncing between your content and a search query searching for similar content. You will get higher rankings if the relevance of your meta tag matches what the user is searching for, along with their satisfaction.
Meta Titles
One of the most critical meta tags we’ll be discussing is your title tags. Meta Titles have a drastic impact on your search rankings and are visible to the regular user who’s searching Google. The words will appear at the top of each tab in their browser for both organic results and paid ads.
The title tag explains to the user what the page is about before they click on it. Google and other search engines look at the title tag and compare that to the rest of the content on the page.
If you’re working inside of WordPress, we highly recommend the Yoast SEO plugin. The Yoast SEO plugin allows you to create a custom title tag within each page very quickly. Make sure to keep your title tags descriptive and short. It will show “green” when it’s the correct length.
Think of this as you standing outside next to your competitors with billboards in your hands. What would you say about your webpage versus your competition? Be sure to add in your relevant keywords and location to help with rankings.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions help search engines determine the page’s topic and the audience that will find value. More importantly, the meta descriptions explain what users will find on the page if they click on the link.
When writing meta descriptions, keep in mind quality is still king (or queen). A very well written meta description can generate higher rankings in the search results, along with a higher click-through rate with users.
We recommend keeping your description between 165 and 175 characters long. See an example of one of our local periodontist clients below.
Heading Tags
If you want to have any success with on-page SEO, heading tags are a necessity. Your website and every page should include multiple heading tags, ranging from the H1 to the H6. The most important heading tag is the H1.
The H1 heading is usually the page title or name of the page or post. On a category page, your H1 would be the name of that category. On a product page, your H1 would be the name of that product. You can only use one H1 heading per page. Otherwise, you will get docked for SEO.
As you write your page content, you can also use the H2 and H3 headings to introduce different sections of your page or content. An H2 heading is just like a chapter in a book. The section you’re reading now is an H4 heading since a section of a subsection. This will help Google and other search engines be able to read the structure of each page and rank them accordingly.
Internal Linking
Getting your website content to rank correctly is going to need links. Google begins to rank your pages and posts better when they’re linked to somewhere else on the web.
Internal links are also important in connecting your content to give Google a better understanding of how your website is structured. This will also allow link juice to pass through your site better.
Internal linking can get broken up into two categories: internal and external.
Internal links throughout your site and blogs will deliver a better user experience for your visitors and will also enhance your SEO. An example of this can be seen below.
An internal link is a hyperlink that goes from a word or phrase on your website page to another website page or blog within your website. An external link is a hyperlink that goes from a word or phrase on your website page, which goes to an external website page away from your website.
You want to make sure that the internal links open in the same web browser tab so the user can see the flow. When doing internal links to external websites, you want to make sure they open up in a new web browser tab, so the user doesn’t leave your site.
When doing internal links, make sure you’re using anchor text (the word or phrase that is being linked) that relates to the URL that it’s pointing to so you don’t get penalized by Google.
Optimize Your Images
When you’re deciding what images to use on your website, make sure they are unique and relevant to that page. Users are much more likely to react to an image before they begin reading a post.
With how popular Instagram and social media, in general, has grown to be, our society is trained to react to images first.
When using images on your site, make sure you’re using the highest quality images possible. Google and other search engines prefer higher resolution images.
You always want to keep page speed in the back of your mind when adding in images. Resize your images below a 150KB file size to ensure that it doesn’t negatively affect your website speed.
When adding in an image, make sure that you always add in the image alt-text. An optimized alt-text gives Google another clue on what your page is about. The alt tag should be used to describe what the image is about, so it’s visible by Google’s crawlers.
We’ve already gone over what SEO is and also what on-page SEO is. Your head may or may not be spinning already. Either way, fear not, we’re here to help you.
Off-page SEO (or off-site SEO) refers to actions that happen outside of your website that have an impact on how your website ranks within search engine result pages (SERPs).
If you haven’t started with working on your on-page SEO, make sure you start that before diving into your off-page portion of your SEO campaign.
True off-page SEO is one of the most challenging but essential aspects of your SEO campaign. There are a lot of variables that come into play when perfecting your off-page SEO campaigns.
You want to make sure you stay clear from companies that promise you “x” amount of links for $200 per month. The majority of those companies perform black-hat SEO and will eventually get your website banned from Google. Don’t take shortcuts when it comes to your SEO.
Building quality backlinks is one of the most important aspects of off-page SEO. Google and other search engines use backlinks to indicate the quality of the content that’s linked. A site with more high-quality backlinks will usually rank much better than the same site with fewer backlinks.
For today’s article, we’re going to keep our recommendations simple and geared towards dentists and periodontists.
Citations and Directory Listings
Citations and directory listings are the first and easiest step for you to get more links to your website. Citations are mentions of your practice name, address, and phone number (NAP). You first start with having that information listed on your website, mainly on your contact page and also in the footer of your website.
Citations are a significant factor in how Google ranks businesses in its local listings. The more your business is mentioned online also plays into how high you rank in the listings.
Once you’ve made sure that your citation matches across the board, you can then get it listed in relevant directories.
You will then want to get your business listed in all local directories that apply to your type of business.
Make sure that your actual business name is listed in all of your directory listings, and it’s not a combination of the business name and the dentist’s name. This causes a lot of confusion for customers trying to find your business.
There are a lot of industry-specific directory listings. If you search for “dentist directory listings,” there should be a ton that pops up. Otherwise, you can always hire a company to submit your information to every listing that has to do with your business and industry.
The top three directory listings are General Business Directories, Industry Specific Directories, and Local Directories.
Google My Business
Your Google My Business page will be one of the most important aspects when completing your citations and directories check-list.
Google My Business page is one of the fastest ways of seeing results for SEO. Setting up your account is extremely easy.
Once your Google My Business page has been verified, you can then add photos and add more content to describe your business better.
5. Reviews
Online reviews are critical for many reasons, so don’t bypass this thinking that it’s not a big deal. Over 90% of people searching online look at reviews before visiting the business. That’s a considerable number.
Online reviews are also another way to increase your SEO rankings since Google uses reviews as another way of deciding how to rank your website. If you’re a local business with 10x the amount of 5-star reviews, the chances are that your business is going to be at the top of Google’s local 3-pack.
As you can see, our SEO client, Malek Periodontics, has 38 reviews with a 4.6-star rating, and they are #1 in the Google 3-pack listings. This has drastically changed the amount of traffic they have gotten.
The more 5 star reviews you get on Google, the more Google will want to show your Google My Business page off in the Google local 3-pack and will result in moving up the rankings in the SERPs.
You should always have a patient leave a review as they’re leaving an appointment or in a follow-up email with a small gift or incentive.
In Conclusion
As you can see, we went over a lot of information regarding SEO tips for dentists and periodontists. We showed you the data on how many people search online, how they decide on what company they buy from, and how you can be seen by more of your ideal customers. If you follow the above tips and strategies, you should get a lot more website traffic and, in turn, a lot more patients coming through your door. If you have any questions or want a quality SEO agency to assist you with all of this, feel free to contact us today.
It’s no secret that the cannabis and CBD industry has been growing at light speed for the last couple of years. Both cannabis and CBD are mainstream where every day people are talking about the health benefits and are curious about learning more about them.
In fact, the cannabis industry is projected to hit $66.3 billion by 2025 and the CBD industry is growing to all new heights as well. The CBD industry is expected to reach $22 billion by 2022.
With those times of numbers with a big fat “B” behind them, you know there are a lot of people trying to rush into a goldmine and make a huge profit.
In this article, we’re going to talk about how our client, 3Win Corp, decided to skip the gold and sell shovels to all the gold miners like back in the 1800s during the gold rush.
Who is 3Win Corp?
3Win Corp is a wholesale CCELL® distributor, in 29 states in the US and 5 foreign countries. The company originated in 2015, growing from 6 employees to 38 employees within the last 12 months, with over 50 in 2019.
Their main clients are dispensaries, research labs, and extraction facilities. 3Win Corp is one of only four distributors worldwide that can sell and distribute CCELL® products, known for being the industry standard.
Selling Shovels in the Gold Cannabis Rush
Ever since the cannabis boom, everyone is trying to get in somehow. The majority of business owners and investors try to break into the industry by owning dispensaries, growing cannabis, or launching cannabis products.
Not 3Win Corp. They noticed a need in the market. Marijuana and CBD aren’t going anywhere and they knew that. Instead of offering the actual product itself, they offer the highest-quality accessories.
3Win Corp offers CCELL® products that are known for being the industry standard in vape technology. The vaping market is estimated to reach almost 55 million adults who vape by 2021. That’s a lot of people who need high-quality products to go with their marijuana and CBD products.
The Cannabis Market is Cut-throat Competitive
In 2018 alone, the cannabis industry had over $10 billion in investments that went towards marketing, advertising, and R&D. Some might think that the marijuana industry is a bunch of “hipsters” or people that just like to smoke pot. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Everyone is wanting a piece of this pie.
With that said, it has gotten more and more difficult to grow your cannabis brand over the years. Major investors and funding have got involved, which has made the playing field a bit unfair unless you have some massive firepower behind you.
This is one thing that 3Win Corp has ran into as the majority of its competitors are doing over $100 million per year in revenue and have major funding. They knew that they had to put forth more marketing firepower to saturate the market. They’ve since done just that but first, we’ll go into what they were dealing with.
Poor UI/UX/CX – Lack of Clarity and Consistency
3Win Corp was experiencing slower growth and loss of revenue. They had a website, but it wasn’t converting. Call-to-actions on the site were poorly displayed, and the customer experience was lacking – the site was not leading to an increase in sales.
The site did not highlight 3Win Corp’s phenomenal product offerings and capabilities. This made it nearly impossible to close deals unless they were in person, resulting in high costs for travel and print collateral. The sales team was frustrated with the sales process, and customers were frustrated with the lack of clarity and accessibility of 3Win Corp’s product offering.
Poor Search Engine Visibility
3Win Corp had little no SEO work done prior to working with Avintiv Media. With how many laws and regulations hinder how the cannabis and CBD industries advertise their brand, SEO and content creation have become the most important tactic in growing these types of brands.
3Win Corp was resting close to the 26th page of Google for every keyword that they wanted to rank for, which put them very far behind their competition.
Extremely Slow Load Times
3Win Corp had a landing page with not much usability or functionality. The older website experienced extremely slow load times which made it harder to grow the business. Due to slow load times, visitors would leave before engaging with the site leading to little to no conversions.
Slow load times were hurting 3Win’s Google rankings and increased bounce rates exponentially. Google now expects every website that wants to rank to have their website built properly with an amazing customer experience.
Over 47% of users expect a website page to load in two seconds or less. Even worse, over 40% of users won’t wait more than three seconds before leaving the site. Everything is customer-centric and to win in a competitive market, you must focus on the customer and not the competition.
The Solution – How 3Win Corp Grew 2000% in 2018
Custom UI/UX Design and Development
3Win Corp knew they needed a higher converting website and reached out to a couple of agencies, but the others didn’t play the part of what they were looking for. 3Win Corp stated, “When we reached out to Avintiv Media, we knew it was a no brainer with how professional you guys are and the experience you gave.”
Brand awareness and consistency built into the user interface and experience
Mobile-first and device responsive design
Conversion focused on engaging CTA’s built with clarity and consistency
Easy navigability, mobile-friendly and clean functionality
Built each page with on-page SEO enhancements
Website currently gets over a 92% rating with Google
“We get so many compliments on our website and brand, which gives more confidence to the employees and people that work with 3Win Corp.”
SEO Strategy and Implementation
We implemented SEO initiatives, strategies and campaigns focused on Google algorithms and visibility growth. 3Win Corp’s competition has invested heavily in SEO so there was a lot of catching up to do.
3Win Corp now has a convertible website and ranks on page 1 of Google for many of their targeted keywords.
3Win has experienced consistent growth and the ability to build out entirely new teams for customer service as a result of steady traffic flow and lead generation.
3Win Corp has experienced 8x growth in hiring employees since our campaign launch. In 2018, they increased 35% in sales, getting 8+ new leads per day, and their website traffic has gone up 2,000%.
As you can see, 3Win Corp experienced crazy amounts of growth in 2018. We can’t wait to share what we’re up to for 2019-2020 as it’s MUCH BIGGER!
If you’d like to see how Avintiv Media can help your brand become an industry dominator, reach out to us.
With the boom of the cannabis industry over the last couple of years, it’s no surprise that an easier go-to-market solution has emerged and is BOOMING. Cannabidiol (CBD) is the new craze and everyone wants in. Even if you already own a CBD brand, keep reading to learn how to start and market your CBD brand correctly.
Starting and marketing your CBD brand is not as easy of a task as it was two to three years ago. The market is extremely saturated and there are some extremely big players in the game now with unlimited funding. CBD is officially mainstream in the entrepreneur and investor world, which makes everyone want to join the bandwagon.
We’ve been waiting for our 80yr old grandparents to give us a call saying how they are launching a CBD brand. All jokes aside, it seems like everyone is wanting a piece of the pie. How big is the CBD pie?
What is CBD?
Before we dive into how big the CBD market is, we want those of you that don’t know what CBD is.
CBD is short for Cannabidiol. CBD is one of over 100 known compounds found in the cannabis Sativa plant. This compound is found in both THC-rich strains of marijuana and also hemp. These plants are both classified as cannabis but the difference is that hemp produces only small amounts of THC, which are less than 0.3%. The compound carries much higher amounts as CBD, which is non-psychoactive eliminating the “high” feeling that THC has.
How Big is the CBD Industry?
Before we dive into how to start and market your CBD brand, you need to know how big the industry as a whole is.
Brightfield states that the market for hemp-derived CBD products was around $591 million for 2018, and speculated to grow to $22-23 billion by 2022. Yes, that is a B for billion!
Below is a chart of the industry’s growth and future sales forecasting.
• 2014 – $108 million industry
• 2017 – $190 million industry
• 2018 – $591 million industry
• 2022 – $22 billion industry
Is CBD Legal?
Everyone wants to know, “Is CBD legal?” If you’re growing industrial hemp with the sole purpose of extracting high-quality CBD, that sole purpose is currently backed by the federal government. In December 2018, the 2018 farm bill was enacted. Among many of its other provisions, it removed hemp (not cannabis) from the list of prohibited substances. Hemp is now a legal agricultural commodity, and so are the products made from it.
Some individual states have taken a much different stance on this and have chosen to ban CBD products which is key for anyone who has an eCommerce CBD store. You can always see which states CBD is legal.
CBD is still available to purchase and consume across the majority of the United States and in most places products still appear to be available, although some cities have banned the sale of food containing CBD. “CBD cannot be lawfully added to food or be labeled a dietary supplement,” was stated by the FDA with their public hearing on May 31st, 2019.
How much THC can your CBD have to be Legal?
Hemp and certain forms of CBD are federally legal, but you need to understand what aspects to look for when purchasing a CBD product. Many CBD brands that start decide to work with white-label CBD manufacturers because they don’t have the necessary capital to go to some of the larger manufacturing companies. Do your homework before deciding to work with a white-label manufacturer.
For CBD to be considered legal, the industrial hemp must contain .03% or less of THC. Any more and the plant is classified as marijuana and has many different laws that will drastically affect you and your customers.
There is still much confusion between CBD vs THC, which leaves a lot of questions for the general public. Federal agencies have started enforcing 0.3% or less THC policy much harder, which will keep the public much more well informed and safe.
Start Your CBD Brand
After reading the above information, you now realize how much work you have in front of you. At Avintiv, we are very data and research-driven. Everything we’ve done with building and scaling over 200 successful brands, starts with research and strategy.
This information will help new start-up CBD brands and CBD brands that have hit a plateau. We highly recommend building a brief business plan or investor pitch deck that you can use as a roadmap towards success.
CBD Business Plan
Writing a business plan is a good idea even if you never plan on getting a loan from a bank or bringing on investors. You are able to use this business plan as a road map and allows you to benchmark your progress to see how on or off track you are. We won’t go over all aspects of a business plan today. We will point out the key factors to focus on.
Market Analysis – The market analysis will give you a break down of the CBD market, what segments there are, and what type of consumers your company will be marketing to.
Competitive Analysis – You must research and present a clear comparison of your business to your direct and indirect competitors. You need to know your strengths and weaknesses between your business and the competition.
Products and Services – What type of CBD products will your brand carry? Are you launching CBD oil, edibles, topicals, cosmetics or vapes? What will differentiate you from the competition?
Marketing Plan – Your marketing budget must clearly explain how you’re going to reach your ideal customers to hit your sales forecasts. You must clearly define how it’s going to be done and what your marketing budget is.
Sales Strategy – This portion of your business plan explains how you’re going to be selling your CBD. Are you only selling on your eCommerce website or do you have national CBD wholesalers or retail accounts?
Funding – From personal experience, Avintiv Media is currently growing many CBD brands, and the average monthly marketing budget is $10,000 – $20,000. You need to list out how you are going to fund your CBD brand. Whether that’s personal cash infusion by the owner or going for funding.
Sales Forecasts – You must create a realistic sales benchmark of what your business can do in sales over the next 3-5 years. Break the first year down to monthly sales goals and then do years 2-5 by year. This will help you determine if you’re on or off track from your goals.
Grow and Market Your CBD Brand
Growing your CBD brand in 2019-2020 is going to be much harder than it was years ago. The market is flooded with new CBD brands every single day, so what is going to set you apart from the competition? We’re going to go over how we’ve been able to grow our CBD clients.
Branding for Your CBD Brand
Branding is and will be one of the most important aspects of your CBD brand. This part is often overlooked as many business owners want to rush to market. They care more about Instagram, influencer marketing, and getting sales. Don’t fall victim to this or you won’t stand a chance with how competitive the CBD market is right now.
Company Naming
A lot of business owners pick a company name that they like for some reason and it never becomes a massive company because the owner was thinking about themselves versus the customer. When picking a company name, ask yourself these questions:
Can I build a $100 million brand with this type of name?
Will customers know exactly what we do when they hear the name?
Does this name clash or interfere with any other CBD brand? (hire a lawyer for this)
Is this a name that our company can build a community or tribe of customers around?
Logo and Brand Styleguide
Developing a logo and brand style guide is much more in-depth as this but for this article’s purposes, we are going to go in order with how our creative team decides on branding direction for our CBD clients.
What is this brand’s ideal target market (customers)?
What type of color scheme is this market used to?
What are other major brands these customers buy from?
What does our brand want to look like? Create a storyboard of brands, colors, and styles your company represents.
What does our brand not want to look like? Create a storyboard of brands, colors, and styles that your company doesn’t want to represent.
Hire an agency or freelancer to help begin the logo sketch phase
Have them finalize 3 variations of logos to choose from (black and white – no color)
Choose the top logo direction
The agency or freelancer will then take your market research and decide on the 3 top color schemes to go with
They will then present your main logo in 3 different color options to go with
Once that is completed, the agency or freelancer should create your brand style guide so everything you do moving forward matches your branding 100%
We won’t go into detail on how to develop your CBD product design or packaging as there are far too many steps to list in this article. Just know that this is by far one of the most important aspects of where your money should be going. If you want to win in the CBD game, it’s going to be the companies that products look better, feel better, and gives the customer a far greater experience.
Here are some examples of recent products we’ve designed in the CBD market.
Marketing Your CBD Brand
SEO
Anyone who’s been in the Cannabis or CBD industry knows the trouble everyone has run into with properly being able to advertise or market their brand. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is by far going to be one of the best investments you can make for your marketing plan.
You will want to have an agency that are experts at SEO as the CBD market is a completely different ball game when it comes to SEO versus many other industries.
Just like SEO, content creation for the CBD industry is extremely important. For one, not everyone knows what CBD is just yet and people are wanting to learn more about CBD before investing in it.
Writing content around your ideal customers and your keywords that were chosen from your SEO strategy will help you choose what articles to write.
If you’re a CBD brand, you should be launching 2-4 blogs per week of at least 750 words. Below are things to make sure you do:
Install Yoast SEO for WordPress
Make sure your blog has an A+ readability score
Add in your keywords throughout the blog
Carefully choose what your Meta Title should be
Carefully choose what your Meta Description should be
Make sure your slug is done correctly
Make sure you internally link 2-4 times throughout your blog
Make sure you link external sites 1-2 times throughout your blog
Social Media
Social media has been the craze over the last 5-10 years but it has gotten extremely pricey to play on the advertising end of social media. For today’s purposes, we’re going to focus on posting organically on Instagram with 0 paid ads.
Tips for social media content:
Thinking of your ideal customers, decide on what types of pictures or posts they will want to see
Think of the verbiage or messaging your ideal customers will want to see
Create a grid mockup over posts that all flow well with each other from an aesthetic standpoint (See below)
Use a social media scheduler like Hootsuite to preschedule all of your future posts
Make sure to engage with everyone that DM’s you or comments on your posts
Example of Instagram Grid that we did for our client, Goat Grass CBD.
Advertising
As Facebook and Google start to loosen up with CBD advertising, there are still other ways to advertise your CBD brand.
A number of our CBD clients hire Avintiv to run retargeting ads for their online CBD stores. Below is just one of the options that’s available to advertise for the CBD industry.
Avintiv has access to a private display network that uses artificial intelligence to
aggressively optimize for click-through rate and conversion using a number of different
data signals that generate excellent results. On average our CTRs range from 1-3%
and up to as high as 8% (No this is not a typo). We offer this in the form of standard
display advertising, site retargeting or a blend depending on how much traffic the site
has.
We can run as many creatives as you like and can track conversions from the campaign as well.
This is helpful for tracking ROI.
Below are some examples of display advertising creatives that we’ve created.
In Conclusion
As you’ve read through our article, we hope you’ve learned how to start and grow your CBD. As you can see, there is a lot of information that you need to know before launching and growing your CBD brand. The days of quickly getting to market and making a million dollars are long gone.
If you’re interested in seeing how Avintiv Media can assist you with growth, feel free to reach out to us on our contact page.
Hi, I’m Jon Boles. I’m the Founder & CEO at Avintiv Media. I launched Avintiv Media in late 2016 and it has been a wild ride since.
I’m excited to share with you a project that has been very dear to our hearts for over 6 months now. The rebranding and identity of Avintiv Media.
Why did we rebrand?
We’ve spent the last 3 years assisting some of the most amazing clients to break through some of the most competitive industries, becoming industry dominators. We launched in late 2016 as a very small boutique agency and although we still have a boutique marketing agency feel, a number of our clients went from David and turned into Goliath. We aren’t working with many small businesses or sole entrepreneurs anymore.
With that said, our primary reasons to do a full rebrand were:
We needed to reposition our agency.
Our resources and in-house capabilities are far more advanced than when we first launched.
We wanted to deliver an entirely new experience to not only paying clients but every single person that interacts or engages with our brand. Our rebranding is very refreshing, exciting, edgy and energetic – it’s full of life…
It was time for us to showcase our real talents on our own brand since we’ve only focused on our clients for the last 3 years.
1 | Repositioning our agency
Since our launch in late 2016, we have worked with many clients in many different industries. We’ve learned that our sweet spot are clients that have been in business for over 2 years and are doing $1,000,000 – $150,000,000 in gross revenue. We knew that we needed to be the authority in our 7-9 figure niche industries that we service clients in. It wasn’t even a question if rebranding was needed.
2 | Our resources are far more advanced
Like any company that launches without venture-backed money; you start small with a younger team. As time goes on, as a business owner, you learn and evolve noticing that things can be done quicker, better, higher-quality, etc. Our team has evolved about 4 times since 2016 and it’s safe to say that we have the most amazing in-house team of rockstars. In over 10 years of being a seasoned entrepreneur, I’ve personally never worked with such talented people in my life and that’s not me being biased. The capabilities and resources we have now are light years ahead of where we were when we first launched. It just seemed like the right time to use that to our advantage.
3 | Delivering a better experience
Our motto at Avintiv Media is, “how you do anything is how you do everything.” How could we keep building award-winning brands that are destroying their competition but neglect our own brand? We treated ourselves like we were a client and put our team through the entire process of building a brand. Every aspect of the new Avintiv Media is built to deliver a remarkable experience that is unmatched in the agency world!
4 | It was time to showcase our talent
If you’re an agency owner, I know you can relate to putting your clients above all else. Even if that means your own marketing, branding, and goals have to be put on hold. If you don’t own an agency, let me walk you through a day-in-the-life quickly. When you own a digital marketing agency that’s growing very drastically, you tend to put all of those needs before the needs of the agency. If the agency is growing and the systems and processes are working, clients are getting amazing results, then why change things up right? As an agency owner, it sometimes feels like you own 30 companies because, at Avintiv Media, we treat our clients as if we owned the company. Everything is on the line with everything that we do. With that amount of pressure, it doesn’t leave much time to make your brand pretty or special when you’re doing that for so many other businesses each week. It was time that Avintiv Media took a step back and truly showed the talents of who we have working at our agency and what we’re capable of.
The Process
This was the fun part of the process. We actually treated ourselves as if we were a client and went through every step that we do with clients. We audited the experience, the pros, the cons, and how we would want to be treated. We started with a full-day brand workshop with all key stakeholders at Avintiv Media which translated into a 10+ page brand identity and positioning guide.
Our creative team then went into the logo design stage. After days of sketches, drafts, crumpling papers, going to the whiteboard – we finally found a logo/branding that could evolve into a $100 million brand. An iconic brand. Not just a marketing agency.
Once the logo and other assets were chosen, we went into what colors we wanted to use to show where Avintiv Media was headed. We wanted to use very popular but futuristic colors that won’t be going out of style any time soon.
I could go on and on but let’s take a look…
The Avintiv Media logo
Before we introduce our new branding and direction, we wanted to showcase the branding that got us started. Below is the logo that brought this 10-year dream and idea in the clouds to life. It’s the logo that shared many laughs and many cries. Lots of projects were developed under this logo. It’s the original logo that won so many amazing clients over and let them get better sleep at night as we gave them their life back.
So… Before we shed the old, we wanted to reflect on what got us to where we are and say THANK YOU to every team member, past team member, clients, fans, followers, and anyone else that has ever believed in us. Every day at work is a dream come true as we change so many people’s lives for the better.
Introducing our new Avintiv Media logo
We’re beyond thrilled to share with you our new logo and identity and make even more memories under it.
We wanted to create a more bold, confident, and edgy logo and identity. Avintiv Media prides itself on offering customized award-winning solutions for our clients, not cookie-cutter, template, or bandaid style solutions. Quality is at the forefront of everything that we do not only with our client’s brand but also inside our agency. We feel that our new logo and identity captures that perfectly.
With our new brand direction, we wanted to showcase a brand that can be seen as an iconic brand, not just another typical marketing agency. Avintiv Media is heading in the direction of working with some of the largest brands in the world and we needed an iconic identity to fit the part over the next 10 years.
Our iconography
We wanted to ensure our iconography had brand recognition and a similar look and feel. To achieve this we sprinkled in Avintiv’s gradient element into every icon.
We used familiar industry iconography to attach to each service we offer so that users do not have to overthink our iconography.
Each icon holds the same visual weight – we do not want one icon to outshine the other when interacting on a page together.
Our new font
We wanted our new font to be fresh with clean sans serif elements that create clean forms and interesting negative space. We also wanted a face with an extensive collection of weights. We think Nexa is a great compliment to our logotype and strategic brand direction.
Our color palette
Our color palette is bright, bold, and in your face. We use gradients as a graphic and color element to evoke emotion and positivity. Our secondary color palette is used for internal branding of our services and to help clients using multiple services to be able to differentiate all client-facing materials without having to search for a number on an invoice.
Welcome to the all-new Avintiv Media
You’ll notice all of the changes from today on. Currently, our website is the biggest change you should notice if you’re not a current client of ours. You’ll start to notice entirely different marketing and the way we’re positioning ourselves.
This is just the beginning for Avintiv Media. We’re so excited for all of you that are sharing this amazing journey with all of us. We have some very big projects we’re working on with major brands that we cannot wait to share with all of you.
Thank you for your support and for being apart of our journey and for letting us be apart of yours.
We are extremely humbled to receive Best Graphic Design by AZ Foothills in their prestigious “Best Of” awards when there are so many great agencies to choose from throughout the valley.
Avintiv Media wins Best Graphic Design 2018
Since 1997, Arizona Foothills Magazine has celebrated the latest and greatest in Valley luxury. They’ve featured everything from the finest resorts and travel destinations to shopping and beauty to fabulous eateries and places to live. Twenty years later, their mission is no different! They still strive to unveil what’s up-and-coming, give credit where it’s due to those who deserve recognition and provide useful information to their loyal readers.
The marketing and advertising industry in Arizona is extremely competitive. It seems like marketing agencies are popping up all over the place as of late. Knowing how much competition is out there, it makes our team at Avintiv Media extremely grateful for winning the best advertising agency in Arizona.
Being located in the heart of old town Scottsdale, we’re in walking distance from most of the action in Scottsdale, Arizona. We’re centrally located for our Arizona based clients to easily get to our office. With Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport being 15 minutes away, it makes it a breeze for our national clients to fly in and hop over for a meeting.
At Avintiv Media, we take great pride in everything that we do. With our mantra, “How you do anything is how you do everything,” we’re perfectionists when it comes to providing our award-winning core solutions of branding, web design, SEO, digital advertising, and strategy workshops.
If you haven’t met us yet, here’s a quick intro into who we are.
“Avintiv Media is an award-winning boutique agency in Scottsdale, AZ that solves problems for its high-end clients, turning them into industry dominators. We offer award-winning web design, branding, and SEO services, yes, but we’re much more than that…we’re an agency filled with hustlers, visionaries, creators, designers, and marketers that simply do one thing: GET THE JOB DONE RIGHT THE FIRST TIME! Quality is at the core that fuels our agency.
We aren’t the biggest guys nor are we the little guys anymore.
Avintiv Media prides itself on offering customized award-winning solutions for our clients, not cookie-cutter, template, or bandaid style solutions. Quality is at the forefront of everything that we do not only with your brand but inside our agency.”
It is unquestionably an honor to be named as the Best Graphic Design by AZ Foothills. Thanks to AZ Foothills for including us in their rankings, we genuinely appreciate the positive feedback. More importantly, thank you to our clients — we are looking forward to turning more clients into industry dominators.
If you’d like to work with Avintiv Media, you can request a discovery call on our contact page.
