Our office will be closed on December 23rd and will reopen on January 9th. For any inquiries, you can send them to team@virtualinnovation.co.nz * All of your emails will be answered once we return. We wish you the very best for the Festive Season and a Happy New Year! See you in 2023! 🎇🎄🚀
Have you ever visited a website, read the text and checked out the images but realized you have no idea what the company actually does?
Is your website clearly explaining the business value?
It’s a common mistake to believe your visitors see your website the way you do. If you want to catch the attention of someone who comes to your website knowing little or nothing about your brand, it’s paramount to nail your homepage messaging.
It is crucial to get your messaging right. All business and website owners must focus on building overall brand identity and trust, drive more site traffic and increase conversions.
Here are the 3 essential components of getting your website’s messaging right:
1. Tell what your business is all about
People don’t know your business as you do. To get them up to speed in a matter of seconds, you have to be crystal clear.
Your elevator pitch message has to clearly state what the business does. Avoid vague and generic marketing language.
We are all visual learners, and a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. Display a visual graphic that supports what you do to help visitors perceive the value your business creates. Make sure that the image fits your elevator pitch.
2. Differentiate your business
In addition to communicating what you do, your main messaging must also tell users how your service or product differs from the competition and can positively impact their lives, also known as a value proposition. The most compelling messaging outlines the product’s ability to solve a problem or fulfill a desire.
Framing benefits around value to the consumer helps them better understand why they need your products or services.
3. Set the right expectations
Your website messaging plays an important role in establishing credibility, delivering what your visitors need and converting them into leads or customers. Being open and honest is important to gain your visitor’s trust. Focus on the users who have a need you can meet.
Make sure to set the right expectations and reassure your visitors that you will deliver on your promises.
More ways to deliver your website’s message:
1. Targeted displays
Here are the 3 categories of display that drive the most on-site conversions:
Pop-ups: This is displayed in the centre of the website or as flyouts in the corner. It works by activating when a visitor to your website or landing page visits or clicks on a designated link, image, or word.
Bars: A full-width bar that typically sits at either the top of your site or the bottom. It is a notification or announcement banner on your website to showcase new products or offers of the site.
Banners: A more subtle interaction that sits at the top or bottom of a site. It is a great way to enhance your visitor’s site experience without being intrusive.
2. Video
Another way of delivering a message that can have a huge impact on conversion is to use a video. Unlike static images and text, videos help bring your products to life and give you the chance to explain why someone should buy by putting the product in a real-life context. A video lets you tell a broader story about your products or services.
3. Chat
Online stores are now investing in automated and live chat to help reduce the anxiety that consumers feel before purchasing from a new retailer. It allows people to ask any questions before completing a purchase, which gives them the confidence that they are making the right decision.
Website messaging is crucial. By better communicating the value your business provides, how you differ from the competition, and setting the right expectations, you can give your website visitors a clear picture of your business and boost conversions.
Our experienced team can help get your website messaging right. Book a call with Stephen below.
MailChimp is a smart email marketing tool for start-ups and small businesses that want to enhance their presence and effectively reach their clients and prospective customers.
It is a winning platform that combines valuable price, unbeatable user-friendly features, and reliability.
It offers business-enhancing analytical features to help you plan and succeed in your email and social marketing campaigns.
MailChimp has been designed with non-tech-savvy people in mind. It is easy-to-use, flexible and has a simple design so that anyone can send out professional-looking emails and social campaigns.
Here are the 3 main advantages of using MailChimp:
1. Forever Free
If you have up to 2,000 email subscribers, MailChimp offers a basic free plan. The free option is perfect for newcomers in their niche that are just starting their email marketing journey. You can add up to 2,000 contacts on your list, and you can send up to 12,000 emails for free a month!
2. Feature-rich
MailChimp is packed with useful features to make your life easier. Some of our favourite features include:
Landing Pages
In MailChimp, landing pages live alongside other campaign types. Landing pages are free to all MailChimp users, so you can build as many as you need. They are different from other pages on your site because they focus on specific, short-term goals so that you can get the results you want. Landing pages can boost your credibility and reinforce your brand.
Ready-to-Use Campaign Templates and Email Designer
MailChimp offers an easy way to customise your email campaigns. You can simply choose a pre-built template and use their easy to use drag-and-drop design feature to start creating your email marketing campaigns. The built-in photo editor and free image database help you get the most out of your images.
Mailchimp’s Marketing Automation
It varies from simple operations to more complex, multi-step processes, and allows for customized workflows based on customer behavior.
Some of the automation that Mailchimp offers include:
Welcome messages
Date-based automations
Behavior-based automations
Abandoned cart messages
Order or appointment notifications
Product retargeting emails
Re-engagement messages
Personalized Product Recommendations
They are available for users who connect a supported e-commerce store or a custom API 3.0 integration that can be found on the Integrations page. It uses individual contact purchase data to prioritize and promote your store’s relevant items. You can add the recommended products to your emails to increase revenue and encourage repeat purchases.
Photo credit: Mailchimp
Organic Social Media Posting
You can use MailChimp to create and share your posts in minutes to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Through MailChimp, you can create, manage, and publish social posts that help you stand out all from one place.
Social Ads and Post Scheduling
You can now create your Facebook or Instagram Ads directly from MailChimp. This feature will guide you through create and publish ads. Choose the people you want to target, including your existing audience, social media users whose interests align with your services or products, or people who visit your website.
3. Insightful Reporting and Analytics
It is very useful to have advanced audience insights into the activities of your subscribers. MailChimp can show you these metrics on its at-a-glance dashboard. Monitoring email marketing metrics can play a key role in determining the success of your digital marketing efforts. MailChimp’s real-time campaign performance and analytics, click map, interactive data visualization and ROI tracking across all channels are very powerful information and can be an invaluable asset to your business.
MailChimp’s combination of useful features, flexibility, and affordability can prove to be particularly beneficial to your businesses.
Ready to see what MailChimp can do for you? As a proud MailChimp partner, we’re excited to share with you what you can do with this versatile marketing platform! Contact us today at stephen@virtualinnovation.co.nz or book call below.
We help companies improve their skills with Canva, from designing templates, create stunning documents and more. We noticed that most people we work with seem to have the same 5 recurring questions about using Canva.
Since we are here to help, and we do love helping people improve their skills, we thought of putting together a really quick and easy to implement ‘Canva How To’ to help you out.
Keep reading to become a Canva Master!
How to Edit Photos
Turn your photos into stunning and professional graphics. Before you start:
Log into your Canva account (if you do not have one yet, you can create one for free).
Click on ‘Create a design’ form the main dashboard and select the design you want to create from the drop-down
Scroll through the Create a design button to view available design type options or choose “Custom Dimensions” and enter your preferred dimensions in pixels in the width and height fields.
3. On the left-hand side click on ‘Uploads’.
4. Upload or drag and drop your photo into the editor.
5. Add additional elements, logo, or image to your design if needed.
6. Crop your photo to get the size you want.
7. Change the mood of your photo with a filter
8. Adjust brightness, saturation and contrast.
9. Download your edited photo!
How to Add Hyperlinks
If you are creating a presentation or a downloadable pdf or other informative documents, you might want to add some hyperlinks to text boxes, elements, photos, or videos to send your audience to your website or other resources.
You can do this easily in just a few steps:
Click on the design element or text box that you want to turn into a hyperlink
Click on the link icon in the editor toolbar
Type or paste the website URL/link
Click the ‘Apply’ button to save the link
How to Remove an Image Background
You might want to merge an image to the document’s background to communicate a certain message or simply because the background does not fit with the document. By removing the busy background of a photo, your image will likely have more impact on your readers.
Follow these simple steps to remove the background of an image:
Upload your own image or choose one from Canva image library
Click on the Effects button on the top corner of your toolbar
Next, click ‘Background Remover’
4. And like magic, the background will disappear
5. Next, simply drag your new image into the perfect spot
How to Create a GIF or Animation
This animation feature helps to create unique animated images or videos to grab more attention and make your design more effective.
Create your design in Canva
Select the design
Click ‘Animate’
Choose from one of the animation options.
Then click “preview animation”.
Select download then follow the drop-down list, select GIF and click download
How to Create a Presentation
A well-designed presentation is a key to engaging your audience. You’ll need to make it simple and easy to understand, visual, functional, user friendly and professional. Your presentation is your chance to make a positive first impression.
Open Canva and select the “Presentation” design type
2. Click ‘Presentation’, then choose from hundreds of professionally designed slides
3. Upload your own photos or choose from over 1 million stock images
4. Fix your images, add stunning filters and edit text
5. Share or download.
We hope these simple tips will help you create your outstanding designs in no time.
If you need any advanced help, reach out to us. Our team will be happy to help you create the right design you need.
Book a call with Stephen today here or email at stephen@virtualinnovation.co.nz.
During tough economic times, does your business invest more in innovation?
What comes out from challenging times is innovation. Many businesses are now tapping into the power of online software systems to improve their productivity and achieve desired outcomes. Developing software is not an easy task. It requires a bit of brainstorming and planning.
To help you get the job done smoothly, we recommend these three ways on how to test and develop your apps:
Glue Together Method
Platform Method
Ferrari Method
Watch the video below to learn more about it.
I know we’re in really crazy times with lockdown’s happening across the world, it’s challenging. But what comes from challenging times is innovation. You know, the biggest changes in innovation in the world have happened when a massive global event has hit. And this is what we’re seeing in Virtual Innovation.
We’re getting a lot of people contacting us about great ideas that they want to turn into online products. I wanted to share a bit of a little knowledge bomb because this is something I take for granted because I’ve been in this industry for so long that many people don’t know the first steps. In this case, how can you develop online software and test it? Because this is the challenge. We all have great ideas, but not all of them are commercial or can be tuned in to both income or true value. You know, what runs through our heads can sometimes not match. So I wanted to talk about three ways we recommend testing and developing your apps.
So let’s dive into this little presentation I have just whipped up. So the first step is the Glue Together Method. Now, this is very common. Now, if you’re into automation and how things work, you can sometimes get your first version of your idea to work by buying two or three products off the shelf and then using a tool like Zapier to connect them all together. It’s a great way to see if the flow of information is going to work and also to show it to someone and test out. Is there actual value in this? People can start with spreadsheets and other things like that to kick off and then build this out. This is usually the cheapest way to test an idea and with a bit of coaching, you can usually get it done or there are some great automation specialists. If you need any help, we’ve got a few great ones on our books that can help you out with this. But this is a great way to test it without investing tens of thousands of dollars in building the machine.
Now, the next method is the Platform Method. So this is a method where we have taken off the shelf platform that’s designed for developing these types of products. Now, this is good if your tool is going to be sold one to one, or if it’s a higher value thing that you want to get out into the world. So we basically take all of those things, pull it together into something that’s a little bit cleaner, a little bit more flowing. And you’re not using all these too many different artists out the side of it. This can run payments and we use one called KnackHQ.com that we develop on. It’s a really cool platform. It’s really good for specific projects, like if you’ve got a service business and you want to add a bit of technology to take some of your IP and pull it all together. Fantastic for stuff like that, stuff that isn’t going to grow and be sold off and be worth millions of dollars. The platform, if it’s great, it’s also great for building minimum viable products on as well. It can be very useful. It lowers the cost because they’ve already developed a lot of the base of what you need. It’s more about pulling everything together, which is not free. Don’t get me wrong, it’ll cost money to do, but it won’t be as big as the next method, which is the Ferrari Method.
Now, this is what most people aspire to. They want a Ferrari, but like having a beautiful Ferrari, it also costs investment and when I say investment, I mean money and time. You know, these take a lot longer to build, to develop. And they need to be planned very thoroughly. If you’ve really got an idea and you know it’s going to work commercially, what I always recommend is taking time to actually plan it. It’s sometimes the most boring thing to do for a creator. If you’ve got a big picture vision, you might think, hey, I don’t want to spend all this time planning, I just want to dive in. But that can be a very expensive lesson, three, six, nine months down the track when you realize you hadn’t actually explained something to a developer and you have to rebuild a whole section of your platform because it was never built for what your dream was.
Getting the planning right and we do a bit of this through the Regional Business Partners Network. They can help fund some of the coaching and planning around how you think about this. It’s really important to get that thinking really clear before you dive in and then we can help. We’ve got a team as well that can help build these out for you. Now, if you’re interested in doing something like this, if you’ve got a big idea and you’ve kind of got a bit of budget set aside to give it a crack and you want to talk about it, what I’d suggest is locked in a REV Session with us now, we’re going to talk about results, expectations and values. What do you value that comes first in this platform or this idea? So we’ve been doing this for an age, so we’re more than happy to help. This REV session costs you absolutely nothing. I really love talking about ideas. Happy to sign an NDA if you wish, at the beginning of it, although I really don’t have time to steal ideas, I have too many of my own. I’m sure you feel the same way, but I just wanted to share these ideas because not everyone has these pictures that I do in my head because I’ve been doing this for so long.
So hopefully that’s added some value. If it has, give it a share. And if you’d like to get in touch with me, you can see me a private message on LinkedIn or Facebook or find us a www.virtualinnovation.com.nz.
Do you feel like you send 100’s of emails each day? What if those emails could also generate you new leads?
Emails are one of the most effective ways of marketing and your email signature can be a very easy way to generate leads and make sales. It is more than just your name and title. It should make a statement about you and your business.
An email signature is part of your branding as much as a business card or a piece of stationery. It helps to catch your readers’ attention, convey more information about you and encourage them to respond.
It’s important to get your email signature right to make sure it is memorable and informative.
Below are 8 tips to generate leads from your email signature:
1. Add your contact information. Your contact information should include your phone number, mobile number, email address and business website.
2. Add your image. If you use a photo in your email signature, it needs to be a professional image. Avoid using selfies or obvious crops from other photos.
3. Display your logo. If you work for a business or organization, you may want a more uniform corporate look to your email signature.
4. Include your social links. It is becoming increasingly important to include social media contact information in your email signature. Social media provides another way for your readers to connect with you. It is an important part of building an ongoing business relationship.
5. Include a short video. You can show your latest promo, product or services. Every email you send will educate people on the different things you offer.
6. Include a CTA (call-to-action). Email signature CTAs are a great avenue for lead generation. They give the reader another option to engage with you or your company. Make sure to change it every couple of weeks to give readers new opportunities to engage with you.
7. Be colourful. One of the easiest ways to catch attention is to use colour. Readers are more likely to pay attention to a signature with a pop of colour.
8. Use mobile responsive design. The usage of smartphones and other mobile devices has increased. A responsive design adjusts for mobile readers.
Get a professional email signature design that’s just the right fit for your business needs.
If you are having trouble including your company logos, image, video or any other content to your email signature, we are here to help. We can create an attractive professional email signature that’s uniquely yours. Book a FREE virtual coffee meeting with Stephen below.
Covid-19 has effected many small and medium businesses throughout New Zealand.
The government has stepped up and created the Covid 19 Business Advisory Fund to support you at this time. Could you qualify for support?
The fund is available through the Regional Business Partner Network (RBPN), which we are proud to be a part of and to be able to help your business throughout this challenging time.
Virtual Innovation offers some of the services that are registered with the COVID-19 Business Advisory Fund, including business planning and marketing. We understand that what businesses need the most coming out of this pandemic is more sales.
To help our clients finding and keeping more of their ideal clients, we designed the Website Blueprint Program to help them create websites that deliver real results. Our program has proven to improve companies’ website leads by over three times.
If you are a business in need of more sales and your first point of call is a conversation to start the sales process, we will coach you, advise you and provide you with the most valuable resource to attract your ideal prospects.
What is the process to get started?
If you are a small or medium-sized business, you may qualify for funding or co-funding to help pay for advisory and marketing services, such as our Website Blueprint Program. Funding will cover up to 100% of your costs, while with the co-funding arrangement your business must pay at least half the training costs. Please click here for more information. The funding is available through the RBPN Growth Advisors.
For advice on what types of help you might be eligible for, the first step is to register your business through the RBPN. Once you registered, your growth advisor will contact you within 48 hours to set up a meeting to discuss your needs, aspirations and challenges. From there it will be determined which option will be most appropriate for your business needs.
You can find more information and answers to the most common question by visiting the RBPN page here.
We are very proud and excited to be part of the Regional Business Partner Network. Virtual Innovation and The Regional Partner Business Network can help your business thrive and we are confident that we can help and provide great value to many eligible businesses during this trialing time.
Your elevator pitch message has to clearly state what the business does. Avoid vague and generic marketing language.
Website messaging is crucial. By better communicating the value your business provides, how you differ from the competition, and setting the right expectations, you can give your website visitors a clear picture of your business and boost conversions.
