A Guide to the Importance of Branding for Your Business

Branding is the process of deciding on a message that your company will embody and letting that message inform all of the decisions you make. When used effectively, branding can make it so that people who have never personally interacted with your small business still recognize your imaging and marketing. Learn more about branding and how it can improve your business outcomes.

Building Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is the number of people who are familiar with your brand. According to research, the more often people see your brand, the more likely they are to become customers. This is called the mere exposure effect, and it is part of why branding is such a powerful tool for business owners. If your brand imagery and phrasing are consistent throughout your stores, products, and marketing, you are building brand awareness for your business among consumers.

Perfecting Brand Imagery and Text

Some aspects of branding you can manage on your own. Coming up with the original motto, ensuring that all branding efforts reflect the company values, and even designing the logo using an online designer tool are all within most business owners’ powers.

Other tasks require a professional touch. Copywriting should be done by someone who understands your target audience and how to reflect your branding in a way that is meaningful to them. Your website should be designed with professional knowledge of how to create website appeal and usability. Your marketing imagery should be created by someone who understands design and the desires of potential customers. You can find professionals to fulfill all these tasks and more on one of the many freelance job marketplaces online that allow you to read reviews and compare prices among freelancers to see which are best for your business.

You can and should still have a hand in how your branding is present throughout your business’s products, website and marketing, and you can communicate with your freelancers easily over email. If you need to share a number of image files with someone on your team, use a JPG-to-PDF converter that retains an image’s quality while minimizing the size so you won’t have to send multiple attachments to get your ideas across.

Keeping Current

What works today in branding may not work tomorrow, so it’s essential to know how to balance your marketing efforts so that you can tweak some of them when necessary without having to change them all at once. Business 2 Community recommends businesses consider marketing to be an extra communication channel used to create a connection between them and potential customers and to assess that connection regularly. Be on the watch for any signs a branding or marketing effort isn’t working so that you can make changes to your strategies before your company suffers monetarily.

To keep abreast of best business practices in everything from branding to accounting, consider going back to school to earn a bachelor’s degree. Regardless of how much education you have already, there are online options that you can complete at home on your own schedule so that you can still fulfill your work and family obligations. Make sure to check the accreditation status and reviews of any programs you are interested in before applying.

Branding can bring in big results for your business when done correctly. Develop a solid brand that you're proud to share with the world and watch how it can bring the world to you.

When you want to grow your business and boost your brand, get in touch with the marketing team at Oevae.com or Call 972-850-8823 today to schedule a Free 30-minute marketing consultation ($100 Value).

How to Attract Entry-Level Employees to Your Dallas Small Business

Finding great employees for your small business is hard enough. When you live in a busy metroplex like Dallas, it can be even harder. As wonderful of a place as Dallas is, employees aren’t always eager to deal with the difficult morning and afternoon commutes. So how can you, as a small business owner, attract entry-level employees to your business?  Try using the following advice to help you find the staff you need.  

Improve Your Outreach

If people down the road haven’t heard of your business, you can’t expect workers in nearby cities to be familiar with it. Improving your company’s marketing can make it easier to attract both customers and employees. Ensure your company has a website and social media presence so potential employees can learn about the business, and consider other ways to increase your marketing. 

One way to boost outreach is through marketing, and Oevae Marketing Consultants can help you determine how to make this work for your business. Additionally, think of ways to enhance your social media or website so that your search for new staff is front and center. You can easily do this yourself by using an online banner creator. The ideal tool offers an array of banner templates, as well as other design assets to punch up your design. 

Know Where to Advertise

Advertising job postings in the right place are essential for reaching your target audience. That means you can’t just stick an ad on Craigslist and call it a day. FitsSmallBusiness.com walks you through the differences between popular online job boards, but there’s no reason to limit yourself to online postings. You can find qualified applicants by attending job fairs and career events, letting nearby university career centers know you’re hiring, and connecting with nonprofits that help people find employment.

Offer Competitive Wages

Dallas has a relatively high cost of living compared to other big Texas cities, so it’s important that your wages match up with the local average in order to be competitive. If you’re not quite sure what to pay, research the average cost of pay for your industry and the job you plan to offer, as well as what similar wages are in the Dallas area. Ideally, you should have a range that’s a comfortable fit for your budget, and that allows you to adjust your offer based on an applicant’s skills and background. 

Provide On-the-Job Training

Not all incentives have to come in the form of cash. You can make your business a more attractive employer by offering benefits that other companies lack. A common complaint from entry-level employees is that companies want experienced workers but aren’t willing to train on the job. While it’s true that internal training does cost money in the form of your own valuable time, it’s a good strategy for recruiting staff even when cash flow is tight. On-the-job training also improves employee retention and reduces mistakes because workers are trained to your company’s specifications.

Permit Flexible Hours

Commuting by public transportation can mean long travel times, especially at peak hours. If an open position doesn’t require a set 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule, consider offering flexible working hours so your employees can avoid transit at rush hour. While not all employers are comfortable letting staff work from home initially, offering remote work as a future option can add to the incentive for entry-level hires. If you are worried about your employees managing their time wisely, you could use time-tracking software. Well-chosen software allows your employees to work from wherever they are, providing them with more job satisfaction, and peace of mind.

Create Opportunities for Growth

Employees are more likely to go out of their way for a company that offers long-term potential. Make it clear to prospective employees what opportunities for growth they’ll find in your company. Depending on your business structure, that could be promoted to a higher position, increased responsibility and pay at the same position, experience in horizontal roles within the company, or opportunities for external professional development.

As the job market fluctuates, it’s getting harder for many businesses to attract and retain quality employees. In order to find the best help for your small business, it’s necessary to stand apart from the competition. By targeting your search and offering the benefits that workers are looking for, you can find the talent your business needs to succeed.

Image via Pexels

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6 SEO TECHNIQUES THAT WIN CUSTOMERS, FOR REAL!

So finally, you have launched your new website, and you are eager to expand your business online. The website is highly responsive, attention-grabbing, user-friendly, and looks fabulous. But how are you so sure that your target audience will actually find it? Will you ever get the desired results if your website does not appear in Google for your potential client's keyword searches? 

SEO (search engine optimization) helps enhance your business’s online presence and reach your target audience. With time and effort, your visibility grows gradually and increases your brand awareness. But search engine optimization is not a quick and easy task. It is an intricate process that requires technical knowledge, as well as understanding the dynamics of the Google algorithm. 

But the best part is that once you implement the techniques well, there's no looking back. With improvements in traffic, your lead generation will be enhanced, and as a result, you will experience higher sales. This is a given since referrals from keyword searches capture qualified customers already in the buying cycle, honing in on your specific product or service. 

Are you yearning to learn some effective SEO tips and techniques? We have curated a list of SEO techniques that promise to give your business a boost. Now let’s dive into those valuable ti

Top 6 SEO Tips and Tricks to Boost Your Website Visibility

1. Finding a niche

Search engines point their users to content that is relevant and authoritative. That's why, if you are an expert in a specific niche, your website should reflect that. Suppose you are a professional dancer and have launched a website for promoting your dance studio. Your content should be related to dance and not deviate from the topic. Keep the red velvet cake recipe for your social media as it won't do anything for your website or blog.

2. Keyword research and how to choose them: Keywords should be chosen carefully as they either make or break the deal. If you run an a la carte restaurant in Sydney, then your keywords should be “Restaurant Sydney” or maybe, "5-star restaurant in Surrey Hills, Sydney.” When your target visitor uses these keywords to search for specific services, your competitors’ websites will also appear in the search results. Therefore, you should use long-tail keywords that are more specific, detail-oriented, and can guide your potential clients to your website and specific niche. If you feel that keyword research is way too complicated and time-consuming, try hiring an SEO expert that will utilize their experience and knowledge to come up with the right set of keywords for your website content and blogs.

3. Content goals and optimizing on-page: You need to have a clear content strategy and adhere to it in order to meet your SEO goals. Content is what gives you the tools for on-page optimization. For instance, build out new content through your blog and focus on internal linking. Unlike backlinks, you can use internal linking to manage the flow of traffic to key pages in your website. 

"When you are publishing a new blog, add links to it from older posts to help Google’s crawlers find and index it."

4. Optimizing images: Image optimization enhances your SEO strategy by improving the website load speed. As a result, users won't leave your site, and thus image optimization also helps in enhancing the user experience. Another significant benefit is that it will keep the server memory safe and secure and also bring down the load on the server. Start by ensuring images are sized correctly and use a plugin to change them to new generation formats. 

5. User Experience and speed: If you are aware of the research by Google, you must know that more than 53% of mobile audiences leave a particular website if it takes more than three seconds to load. Use tools like Pingdom or Google's Test My Site to analyze the speed of your website. If it appears to be slow, then prioritize improving speed. Use the tools that help you with data-driven advice on how to improve your website. Also, when you focus on the overall user experience, you are actually catering to the needs of the searcher. This, in return, improves the performance of organic search marketing.

6. Optimizing the customer journey for conversions: Optimising your conversion rate will enhance your sales. Try to understand user behaviors, bring value to them by delivering simple user experiences. All you need to do is to cater to your customers at every stage of the conversion funnel.

Effective SEO techniques always render positive results. If you need better and swifter results or do not have enough time to devote to SEO tactics, hire renowned SEO experts like Oevae Marketing Consultants who will do the job for you. 

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Art Director Unboxed Cricut Explorer 3 Promotional Marketing Tool

The purpose of this post is to offer potential buyers a closer look into an artistic tool used to create promotional merchandise for small businesses and not so much for special crafts.

Although, those who regular Hobby Lobby and the like will still get a glimpse at the Cricut Explorer 3 and perhaps some new ideas.  This is not a video showing you how the Cricut works or giving you all the specs that are already found on the Cricut website.  Instead, you can watch this video to see the quality and what you get for your money. 

The package Cricut machine arrived in Dallas, Texas at the Oevae Marketing Consultants studio.  You'll notice the box appears to have experienced a brutal blow (gash) to the packaging.  

Let's hope the Cricut isn't shaken up too badly? 

Creating Promotional T-shirts

Most recently we've used the Cricut Explorer 3 to create promotional T-shirts with multiple colors and textured vinyl, and beverage Koozies for bachelorette and bridesmaid swag bags. 

We've learned the real strengths and creative opportunities Cricut brings to small business marketing ideas – more impressive concepts and mockups.  Ideas can be swiftly and professionally created for our clients rather than waiting weeks for proofs and approvals.

Conclusion: If you are looking for t-shirts for a family reunion, fraternity or sorority, team, or groomsman and bridesmaids, I would not recommend purchasing the machine because you will need a good grasp of computer graphics file formats, converting image types, splitting images into parts for multiple color projects, choosing the proper blade and then there's weeding the graphics of unwanted portions. 

Your time and money would be well spent hiring a company like Oevae to create your t-shirts and other merch. So, you avoid all the steps it takes to have professional-looking promotional products, and let the professionals do everything for you in less time and hassle-free. The machine does not come with special tools that help you finish your projects.

Oevae is a branding platform and launchpad for [growing] businesses. Visit oevae.com to learn more about our creative marketing solutions for your business.

Small-Business Cybersecurity 101: Important Tips for Entrepreneurs

Photo by rupixen.com on Unsplash

Did you know that in 2020, small businesses made up 28 percent of cybersecurity incidents that happened across the United States? These dangerous incidents have not only increased in frequency over the years, but they are also impacting small businesses more and more. What do you need to know about small-business cybersecurity? How can you protect yourself?

Why is cybersecurity important?

As of 2019, data breaches cost small companies around $200k per incident, and that number continues to rise. The fact of the matter is that small business can’t afford to let “the big one” happen — many companies would have to shutter their windows if an incident were to occur.

The threat landscape for small businesses changes every day. Especially as more companies sent their employees to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, endpoint security was pushed into stark relief as becoming one of the most important aspects of a company’s security posture. With company laptops being used on personal home networks, and people being connected simply through a screen instead of seeing each other face-to-face, malicious actors took advantage of the situation — nearly 36 billion records were exposed throughout the year.

What can you do?

1. Small business owners should take steps now to protect their systems, instead of waiting until it’s too late. It’s relatively simple to put some precautions in place now, versus paying the price later if your systems are compromised.  Learn how to protect yourself from phishing scams and business email compromise (BEC) hacking attempts. As your business grows and you gain employees, train them to spot scams as well. Essentially, remember that you shouldn’t share sensitive information via email, check the grammar in any “phishy” messages you get, and check the domain of the sender by hovering over the ‘from’ box in the email.

2. Have a disaster recovery (DR) plan. If you are hit with a cyber-attack, you need to make sure you have a backup of your data, for one. The right DR plan will be easy to implement, flexible, affordable, and secure. Working with a managed services provider would offer you the expertise you need so you can breathe easily. Whatever solution you choose, Commvault recommends having the ability to view and manage your data through a single interface — and make sure you frequently test your plan. (Because any good plan should be tested and retested often to gauge its effectiveness.)

3. Update your systems. Updates to operating systems and regular patching often carry security updates that correct flaws that have been discovered in your OS. Therefore, it’s critical to make sure your systems are up-to-date with the latest software.

4. Secure your company Wi-Fi network. Set your router so that it is password protected and encrypted and encourage your employees to do the same.

5. Use two-factor authentication to access company machines. Enabling two-factor authentication is one of the most important things any company or individual can do to combat the spread of hackers. By requiring a second factor to log in to resources (in addition to a password, you may be asked to generate a random code), it strengthens security and keeps malicious actors out of your systems.

Protect your site and keep customers safe.

With a little bit of attention, a little bit of elbow grease, and a lot of precaution, your small business can be protected against the threat of a cyber-attack. For more information about running your small business and making sure you’re getting the most out of your website security, protect your site, and keep customers safe, visit HomeOfficeXpert.com.

Related Content: Using Free Email Accounts for Business (Podcast: Morning Joe with Gibrón) 

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6 Essentials That Can Help You Become a Better Leader

Success in small businesses starts at the top. If you are a small business owner, it’s important to keep this in mind and to recognize how your leadership style could be helping or hurting the success of your organization. To gain the respect of your team and help your business rise to the top, you need to possess certain skills and attributes. Curious as to what these are? Then you need to read through this list of some of the most effective leadership skills in business.

Continued Improvement and Education 

Self-improvement is critical if you want to be an effective leader for your business. One way you can improve your skills is by furthering your education. Earning a business degree from an accredited university can give you the management, leadership, and marketing insights you need to truly thrive as a business owner. You can even earn these skills and your degree online, which will help you preserve your most precious commodity as a leader: time.

Business and Leadership Coaching 

The ability to navigate difficult transitions is another quality that can set you apart from other business leaders. Having this skill is especially critical if you own or manage a business during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic since we’re all dealing with unprecedented challenges. If you’re not sure about the best path forward, asking your team for insights can help. You may also want to consider the potential benefits of investing in professional coaching.

Setting Positive Examples  

If you come to work with an open and positive attitude, your employees are likely to maintain a more optimistic outlook as well. That’s because whether you realize it or not, your team looks to you as a role model for everyday business practices and even their own leadership styles. So, make sure that the example you set is a supportive and positive one. Even when things get tough, remember that negative thinking can have major impacts on your entire organization. Adjusting your attitude can improve engagement and eventually improve your business. 

Acknowledging Mistakes 

Honesty is key when you are trying to build stronger connections with your employees. This includes being honest about any mistakes you make. The manner in which you handle your mistakes can make or break your team’s ability to trust you. If you make a mistake, be willing to own up to it and avoid placing blame on others or attempting to cover up mishaps. Honestly, mistakes can provide priceless opportunities for you to evolve as both a business owner and leader. You can also use your mistakes as teaching moments for your staff members. 

Supporting Team Growth 

Employees who feel content and motivated are more likely to view you as a good leader. They’re also more likely to stick around and continue to support your company. So if you haven’t already, make staff growth and development a priority for your small business team. Recognize and reward your employees for any accomplishments and also be willing to help your staff members develop their professional skills. To further increase staff loyalty and retention, it can also be helpful to create a leadership culture that encourages mentoring and communication. 

Knowing When to Ask for Help 

Even the most successful and talented leaders can’t do it all on their own. So make good use of your employees and help them feel valued by asking them for help when you need it. You could ask for honest feedback from your employees to help improve your business and your leadership abilities, or you could simply be gracious when asking for help in day-to-day routines. 

Being a great leader can lead to great success for your small business. So be willing to take a good look at your own skills and talents and commit to constantly improving them. Soon enough, you should notice improvements in your team and your overall business.

Oevae Marketing Consultants can help you create a cohesive marketing strategy for your brand through creative design, social media marketing, blogs, and email marketing.

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Fundamental Tips on Starting a Business From Your Freelance Hustle

So you have a freelance hustle that has become your passion. Maybe it’s even become lucrative. Now, you’re thinking about turning it into a full-fledged business.

Image via Unsplash

Many successful businesses have begun as side gigs. One reason is that passion plays a critical role in long-term success and happiness. When you love what you do, you typically have the drive necessary to persevere through hard times and capitalize on opportunities. 

While starting a business out of your freelance hustle might be a great idea, it’s essential to go about it the right way and lay a solid foundation. From going over your finances to working with Oevae Marketing Consultants to building your online presence, here are a few ways you can prepare:

Prepare your finances. 

First things first: You must make sure your business idea can make money. You don’t want to throw a bunch of money into it upfront — and you definitely don’t want to quit your day job, unless there is a pathway to success. Research your industry and local market to get a feel of what demand is like for your product or service. Also, try to conquer any debt that can harm your business venture, and consider saving up at least six months’ worth of living expenses before quitting your current job.

Here’s another critical consideration: Your business won’t survive without cash flow. You must get paid for the work you’re putting in. That may sound obvious, but it’s a challenge that many small businesses face, especially newer companies. Take time to review guides to learn the ins and outs of the invoicing process as well as best practices. For example: when is the best time to send invoices? What are the different types of invoices? How can I get paid faster on invoices? To ensure that you can keep up with balances owed, even when you’re extremely busy managing your business, you may find that one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways is to use a free invoice generator to prepare and customize invoices. By staying on top of such a critical component of your business, you’ll keep a better handle on your cash flow to ensure it stays at a healthy level.

Learn more.

You may know quite a bit about your freelance hustle and the industry it’s in. But if you want to excel, it’s time to dig deeper and acquire as much expertise as possible. Consider whether you could benefit from getting an online degree in your field, especially since going back to school is now more accessible and affordable than ever.

Also, find a mentor who has ample experience in the industry and who can help you navigate current and future challenges. Find online resources that can help you with the research to guide you through the development of your business. Teach yourself a lot by reading every notable business book you can get your hands on.

Know your market. 

Yes, you’ll want to research your market to determine whether or not your freelance hustle can produce profit as a business. But you also want to research to figure out what your selling points will be to customers and clients. Chances are you will be competing with hundreds — or even thousands — of freelancers and businesses in your field. The extent to which you can set your company apart from them will play a major role in your short-term and long-term success. 

Prioritize your online presence.

Finally, focus on building a solid online presence. If you create a quality website, engage on social media, and list your company on Google My Business, much of your marketing strategy will already be in place. Maintaining an online presence is essential, whether you provide your products or services via the web or a brick-and-mortar location. 

If you’ve decided to go all-in on your freelance hustle, it’s time to hit the drawing board. Be sure to put yourself in a good financial position and learn as much as you can about your field. Do plenty of research in your market and focus on building a great online presence. Implementing these tips will help you lay a foundation for a business that succeeds for many years to come.

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