There are upsides to both custom and stock photos– and there are drawbacks, too. Nobody can tell you with certainty which type of content is best for your brand; but there are some common pieces of advice that can help brands determine which variety of photos might be most effective.

The difference between custom photography and stock photos

• Custom photography is the result of hired photographers; it’s unique, individualised content designed to help highlight a brand’s offerings and personalise their messaging
• Stock photos are generic pictures of people, places, and things; they are licensed for commercial use; anybody who wants to use them can do so

The Pros and Cons of Custom Photography and Stock Photos

The Upsides

Custom photography is original— and if you know anything about marketing and creating consumer interest, you know that individuality is key.

Smart brands use their marketing campaigns to further their overall brand strategy— photos help share their brand stories and communicate their values. It’s much easier to do this through custom content (photographs included) than with stock content.

If you need your photos to be versatile, consistent, and one-of-a-kind, custom photography presents the perfect opportunity to make it happen. You can work in tandem with skilled photo experts to create exactly what you need.

Stock photos are usually a more affordable alternative to custom photography. It can be pricey to rely on an expert’s skills to create custom content for you. You’re obviously likely to find something a little cheaper in a stock collection– but that doesn’t mean that you should give up hope on custom photos! 

You can use stock photos as support to your brand’s wide range of photography. If you notice your budget starting to dwindle, it’s not a bad idea to look into some stock photography to help liven up your content. They’re as easily accessible as they are affordable, so you should never have trouble finding one.

The Downsides

Stock photos do present some risk of dissatisfied or uninterested audiences. That’s because they tend to be simple and far-reaching. Those are great traits when you need a little filler content to boost your marketing aesthetic; they’re drawbacks if you rely too heavily on stock photos.

Competing brands can use the same images whilst use stock photos. Plus brand can tend to come off as disingenuous. It’s tough to communicate with a unique audience or share a brand message through canned content. 

Sometimes, stock photo use can even prompt people to see a brand in a more negative light. These photographs are great when they’re used sparingly, but a site that’s stock photo-heavy likely won’t go over well with audiences.

Custom photography does present some downsides, too. Staging, styling and other elements need to be well thought through. They can also present creative challenges– an uninspired marketing team may have difficulty determining the custom photography that would benefit their brand. If you add an uninspired photographer into the mix, the situation dissolves further.

Need Help With Your Brand Content or Marketing Strategy? Digital White Space Can Help

At Digital White Space, we offer a range of services designed to help our clients succeed in their digital marketing endeavours. We can help with:

• Social media strategy and management
• Digital development
• Customer journey mapping
• …and more!

Reach out to us today to find out more about our service offerings. 

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This Great Realisation by Tomos Roberts really caught our attention.

Tomos Roberts – aka Tom Foolery offers an insight into “after the coronavirus pandemic” A New Zealand-born poet’s bedtime fairytale video, The Great Realisation

The video, titled “The Great Realisation,” was uploaded to YouTube by British artist and poet “Probably Tomfoolery” on April 29. It depicts a father reading his child a bedtime story, however, this tall tale is not quite Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

The father opens up the book and describes to his child the world before coronavirus, including severe economic inequality and irrepressible damage to the world’s oceans.

“Well sometimes, you’ve got to get sick my boy, before you start feeling better.”

“It was a world of waste and wonder. Of poverty and plenty. Back before we understood why hindsight is 2020,” says the father to his child.

“We’d grown so used to bad news but some good news was in the making,” the father adds.

However, just as the story grows grim, the father pivots to talk about a virus, and its impact onto society. He notes that we now have reverted back to a better understanding of what brings us joy, and how we can not only heal ourselves, but also heal the world around us.

This has viewers all thinking about the future and impact they have on the world and is making the rounds on YouTube and social media.

The video garnered over 600,000 views on YouTube as of Saturday morning. On Facebook, the video has been viewed by 8.1 million people, and has been shared almost 300,000 times.

This video illustrates renewed future post-coronavirus, let’s us all hope this is a great awakening to what is important?

Keen to chat about the future of our planet? Digital marketing? or just want to get a virtual coffee? We would love to hear from you.

READ MORE ABOUT US
EX ANIMO
https://helloexanimo.com/
EMAIL; angela@helloexanimo.com
ADDRESS; Level 5, 171 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000
PHONE; 0466 619 631
https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelamellak/

The post Why hindsight is 2020 appeared first on Ex Animo.

These shifts, which might have impacted your business, giving you a new perspective on the power of digital marketing and most importantly your brand equity. This time could have potentially damaged your company’s relationships with customers, particularly if they believed your brand should be slowdown-proof.

How do you know when it’s time to re-branding or reposition your business? If your company name is generic and similar to that of other businesses, you’re hurting your brand. If you have shifted focus and you need to now reset the future trajectory.

Rebranding can help your business stand out from your competitors’ by showcasing the things that make your company different and better. Even the best companies change their brand identity.

For example, did you know that Google started with the name “Backrub” or Accenture started out as “Andersen Consulting”?
Rebranding gives new life to outdated branding. Even the most successful businesses do.

Most recently we have had the pleasure to re-brand Performance Medicine a physiotherapy hub and Studio who supports performing artists across Australia and internationally.

If a company wants to outgrow their poor reputation. If your business is struggling to overcome a negative reputation, it’s time to give it a fresh start.
Sometimes, a business gets the opportunity to expand or target a new market. When that happens, the company needs to make sure that customers can still connect with the brands. Learn how we launched Multitap – a brand new product line from the giant American kitchenware Insinkerator into Australia market.

There’s a good possibility that your organisation would benefit from looking at your brand positioning and/or possibly re-branding, especially to improve your market position later this year.

Which is exactly what our client Verticali has just done, through their rebrand.. To be revealed June 2020!

Fortunately, we are experts in helping companies unlock the power of their brand position and the possibility of re-branding. But, first and foremost, we should explain why brand positioning should be a part of your core marketing strategy and be widely expressed in your digital communications arsenal:

What is brand positioning?
Please understand this term concerns the “how-to” of crafting marketing messages to fit well in the minds of your target market. You want consumers to think of your brand every time they need a product or service in your category. When you seek to define a brand, the goal is to create a distinct brand. The key is providing continuity via digital marketing techniques to drive awareness and maintain your position over time. Your brand’s unique selling proposition should be authentic, sustainable, and agile to support the future direction of the business and withstand major shifts in the economy.

Why is your brand position so important?
Over the years, we’ve helped many companies with repositioning their brand in the market and at times where appropriate re-branded companies. You want your target audience to understand why they should buy from your company. The brand selling propositions implanted in consumers/target market must be strong enough to help your brand increase its market share over time. The alternatives to growth are reaching a sales plateau or, worse, a decline in brand equity and sales.
If you don’t have a strong position, brand association, robust marketing strategy and or understand your customers, then you don’t have a secure business and or customer base. By a strong brand proposition, we mean that, when your buyers think of sneakers, they immediately picture your company’s athletic shoes. When there’s a weak brand association, consumers think of shoes manufactured by other firms.

Brand Equity
A common problem occurs when a business/firm or company doesn’t understand its brand equity. This term refers to the economic value of its brand perceptions. These differ from the real value of each good or service that a brand produces. Equity is earned over time by being market focused and customer focused. If the business doesn’t invest sadly all that hard work can be lost, take Kodak for example.

Revise Your Brand Strategy, Refresh, or Re-Brand
We’re here to help you revise your multi-brand strategy for the remainder of 2020. This means you can take this time to understand more about your customers, their perceptions of your brand, and the equity you own. This study provides you with the opportunity to either reposition, realign, or refresh the company in the minds of consumers. This is achieved through assessing existing messaging objectives and or through the evaluation of your brand position. It’s vitally important to get the consumer insight and formulate a strategy of how to increase your brand association if it has been damaged by COVID-19.
If your brand was already in trouble before the economic slowdown, then we might conduct new research into the current brand and map out the ideal brand territory. We are happy to share brand strategy examples that have worked for other companies. Just get in touch.

The Challenges of Creating a Brand
We understand it’s challenging to create a brand that holds up during economic uncertainty. We felt the effects on our own company. When we evaluate your current position and help you identify how to increase your market share with new initiatives, this process will include updating your brand positioning statement. This document helps everyone in the company as well as external stakeholders to understand how to strategically market the brand for higher economic returns. Brand positioning includes aggressively increasing consumers’ perceived values and real values of products/services.

We Can Help You Tackle Your Branding or Re-Branding Goals Today
At Digital White Space, we are focused on creating sustainable brands that are customer centric. Our marketing team has a long and successful history of refreshing brands, repositioning brands, and re-branding companies. Please get in contact with us to understand how we can help your business.
Learn more about our brand creation process here

READ MORE ABOUT US

DIGITAL WHITE SPACE

EMAIL; angela@helloexanimo.com

ADDRESS; Level 5, 171 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000

PHONE; 0466 619 631

https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelamellak/

The post Have You Unlocked the Power of Re-Branding? appeared first on Ex Animo.

As of April 7, 2020, approximately 66% of businesses in Australia have reported a decrease in cash flow in the short time since the pandemic began.

The big question is, how are businesses going to get back on top post-Covid-19?

They will need to focus on their digital approach and most importantly, their website and digital marketing to transform their brick and mortar business to online e-commerce store.

Websites: Why Do You Need a Good One?

Since the onset of Covid-19, businesses in Australia have had an uphill climb. Nearly 40% of businesses now rely on the internet to satisfy their customer’s needs. More than ever before, they deliver products and focus attention on online services.

If you had to close your doors, you can still adapt your business, transforming the way you deliver services and create new opportunities. Starting with a clear digital marketing strategy. There are many simple strategies with the most simplest way you can focus on initially right now. This includes setting up your company information on Google My Business and Yelp. This is the most common and free tool to set up your business online. The goal is to guide people to your website rather than your brick and mortar storefront. It will demonstrate that you are doing your part to keep customers and yourself safe from COVID-19.

The trick is, you must have a website that is user-friendly enough for people to navigate. They have to be able to find the information that they would seek in your business setting, whether it is the products they need or the services they depend on. So what is the best practices for a good website development?

The Value of Good Web Development

When a customer visits your website, they are not there to waste the day. They are there with the hope that you can provide for their needs during this time when they are physically distancing. Your website has mere seconds to convince them that you are there for them. As a business, you have to understand that online, they are not restricted to your products or services. They have thousands of options. You have to focus on what will make your website best for them and best for their journey while there.

There are several factors to consider when building a user friendly and search engine optimisation website. They include:

• The Speed of Your Website. Does it load quickly enough? Or will the user have to deal with unresponsive web pages?
• The Usability of the Website. Do you have all the information they seek labelled clearly? Can they search for the information quickly?
• The Aesthetics of Your Site. Branding is key.
• The digital face of your business is so important to keep continuity. Bright flashing advertisements or wrong colour choices can make a potential customer click the other way. The website needs to be nice to look at if you want to keep clients happy.

Small Business Trends, reported that 93% of buyers say they focus on visual appearances of a website and 85% claim that the colour often influences their purchasing decisions.

Content Matters.

A content strategy is key to the success of a business online future. It flows from your customer’s journey- providing key information for people before and when they visit your website.
Your Contact Information. In a “brick and mortar” setting, people can get a sense of who they are dealing with through physical, face to face contact. They can ask for recommendations or advice from your employees or you. Today, that is not an option. To keep the experience personalised for customers needs, you can still invite them to contact you with questions or concerns. Covid-19 has not slowed phone calls, emails, and other contact options such as chatbot or message window.

Mobile Friendliness.

Even though people are at home, they still rely on their mobile devices. Can they view your site’s content easily with a mobile device? You can also test how friendly your website for free

If you are unsure of how to build a functional website that is A. aesthetically pleasing and B. provides an enjoyable user experience, whilst C. driving consumer sales, you can ask experts for help. It may be the key to staying ahead during and post this pandemic.

COVID-19 OFFER; For a limited time, get a complimentary social strategy when you bring your business online with us. Find out more now

How Much Do Websites Normally Cost?

A solid website that offers a good user experience is not usually cheap. Packages from many digital marketing companies and/or website agencies can range from $15k up to $100K. If you find someone or a company offering to build you a cheap website, you should know that they are likely inexperienced. This is not good when you depend on it to keep your head above water during these troubled times. In Melbourne, a good average cost for a high-quality website build ranges from $15-$30K. This is a fair price, but it is important to understand that the cost could go up depending on the complexity of the website you need.

The Best Practice for Website Development

When your business website matters most, you should choose a premium website approach and consider consulting with an experienced and proven Digital Marketing company with a key strength in web design. The company will know what it may take for you to get ahead and become relevant. The team should have a methodical process of creating an online experience for your customers and clients. A good website agency can help you with things like:
Accessing the Digital Opportunity for Your Business -Aka Customer Analytics
Website Design
Customer Journey Mapping
Digital Marketing Strategies
SEO and Google Analytics
Website Traffic
Conversion and Marketing Automation
Content Strategy and Creation
Photography and Video
Social Media Strategy
and More
With web design companies like Digital White Space, you will get everything you need to get on the path to digital success, even if you are on a limited budget. Simply contact us to learn more.

Case studies and examples of businesses with great websites:
We have compiled a list of businesses that we have successfully worked with over the years to launch their websites. You can find inspiration and learn a few tips and tricks to plan for your website projects:

• Properties and Estate industry websites
  
• Retail Website
  
• Education

WOULD YOU LIKE TO WORK WITH US? FIND OUT HOW WE CAN POSSIBLY HELP YOU?

READ MORE ABOUT US
https://helloexanimo.com/
EMAIL
angela@helloexanimo.com
ADDRESS; Level 5, 171 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000
PHONE; 0466 619 631

The post Post Covid-19: Websites Are More Important than Ever! appeared first on Ex Animo.

Business owners now more than ever need to always keep driving vision into action.

The rapid pace of media, digital marketing and communications requires action not sand bobbing #digitalwhitespace

READ MORE ABOUT US

https://helloexanimo.com/

EMAIL

angela@helloexanimo.com

ADDRESS; Level 5, 171 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000

PHONE;  0466 619 631

The post Don’t waste time hallucinating appeared first on Ex Animo.

Branding is not just about being seen as better than the competition.

It’s about being seen as the only solution to your audiences problem.

You need to allocate time to work on your business – shift gears to thinking about how you solve customer problems.

Start with a micro-review, an audit, to outline what do you do well? SWOT! Then Macro, who is your audience and how do they like to be engaged?

You must also be aware of what is happening in the marketplace and your competitors. Once you have defined what you do really well – Invest in that message, invest in branding and use all the right forms to demonstrate how to solve your customers problems.

Let us help you on your journey, we are a boutique digital marketing and creative communications team, we assist businesses to devise their strategy to market, we help find their unique selling points and then integrate and capitalise on digital marketing + communications.

Here is some of our work,
https://helloexanimo.com/portfolio-category/case-studies/

Let’s work together,

https://helloexanimo.com/

EMAIL

angela@helloexanimo.com

ADDRESS; Level 5, 171 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000

PHONE;  0466 619 631

The post How are you helping your audience? appeared first on Ex Animo.

We pride ourselves on assisting our clients tell their own unique Brand Story… Let’s work together! #digitalwhitespace

The post Brand story! appeared first on Ex Animo.

Generally the way the industry works is to create a logo, put up a website or sell marketing automation, you hand over the money then you get a pat on the back and sent on your way “good luck, call us when you need anything else” There is no long-term support or care if what you have just created will work for you and your business’s changing needs. (Most companies don’t even realise that the majority of them are created by third parties, here or OS or a combination of both. Which generally entails a lot of extra time and commissions throughout the chain)
Business owners are generally so time poor – and rightly so working in the business not on it. They struggle to be across all elements around digital marketing, media and tools, and or just don’t where to start.
There is a much better way, you can have a group of experienced professionals who can work with you to drive your business objectives and grow your company’s dreams. Without adding to the head count or paying to having tiers upon tiers of management to create and deliver digital tools, websites and integrated campaigns that are designed to drive sales.
There is a new way to get the highly skilled strategists, creative team and care without the vast expense of a full blown marketing and communication team working under your roof. There is a new flexible approach on offer, a way to get the best minds assisting you to achieve success, excellence and drive sales and customer experience.
Our goal is to turn business dreams into reality and work long term to deliver that, so let’s work together.
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Marketing is about makeing people fall in love with your brand.

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