“Let Us March!” Creating Content That Captivates & Converts

We get it. You’re a brand strategist, and you love diving into the details to deliver the big picture for your client. You know their mission, vision, and value proposition; you’ve got a clear picture of the competitive landscape; and you understand their audience. Not only that, but you’ve done their messaging, and maybe even the copy. Now your strategy is going to help your client (re)position themselves in the market. 

Next comes the tricky part: handing over your brand strategy to a team of designers, developers and creatives to deliver on your promise. There are a lot of roles to fill. Besides graphic design, there’s UX/UI design, web development, and copywriting. Whether you’re a freelance brand strategist or part of a small branding team, you can only wear so many hats. 

Sooner or later, your marketing engine is going to need more creatives to keep it running — research and strategy quickly turn into project management, or referrals to other creatives. In effect, you’re giving clients half the solution, and then putting them in someone else’s hands to execute your strategy.  

If those creatives don’t deliver, it reflects badly on your strategy — even if it’s great. That’s when contracting to a design studio makes a lot of sense. Here’s why.

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1. A single point of contact

If you’re part of a network of other freelancers, it might be possible to assemble a full design team to execute your brand strategy. Chances are, they’re working remotely across different timezones and platforms. They also have their own schedules and other clients to consider. 

Onboarding, unifying, and collaborating with multiple freelancers on a single timeline for project completion is no easy feat. Right now marketing and IT talent are in high demand, so if another project comes along that takes priority over yours, you stand to lose expertise, capacity, and time. Say it’s your UX/UI designer — any delay from their end impacts the rest of the website build.  

By partnering with a design studio, everything is handled for you. It’s like having your own in-house design team doing all the heavy lifting. They’re a silent partner executing your strategy. And the best part? It all happens through a single point of contact, so you’re not having to manage multiple creatives to get the job done. 

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2. Totally devoted to you

As a freelance brand strategist, there’s always the option to work with one of the big design agencies. From graphic designers to SEO specialists, they’ll certainly have the in-house expertise needed to execute your strategy. The problem is that they’ll also be serving multiple other clients, and you may not get to meet your creative team in person. 

With all that time invested in getting to know your clients, it seems counterintuitive to contract-out the creative execution to people with no relationship to them or you. Partnering with a smaller design studio means you can actually deal directly with the team responsible for delivering the brand identity, website, and copy. 

Typically, a design studio will work with a single client and have another in the pipeline, so they’re totally devoted to one project at a time. Collaborating with a design studio means you get a closer connection, a more thorough understanding, and a better alignment with your client’s brand strategy. 

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3. Expertise built around you

With a design studio, not only do you get a closer relationship with your creative team, you also get a ready-made pool of technical talent to support the execution of your brand strategy. This saves you time sourcing, hiring, and onboarding the right freelance talent to get the job done.  

A good design studio will put together a team to suit your client’s specific needs. That includes delivering on the technical side of the website such as website performance, SEO fundamentals, and connecting Google Marketing Platform and its sub-products such as Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. In fact, they’ll help you build and roll out the brand way beyond strategy and messaging.

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4. Project management you can trust

When you bring onboard multiple freelancers to a project, it’s time-consuming and costly. With multiple moving parts, it’s easy for something to go wrong or slip through the cracks. This can end up negatively impacting the client’s experience of your services, and therefore your own brand’s reputation.

With a design studio, not only do you have a single point of contact, but any issues with contractors, like the availability of certain expertise, is out of your hands. It’s down to your design partner to take care of the day-to-day and smooth-running of the design execution. 

Put simply, all the heavy-lifting is done for you, so you can sit back and let someone else drive the project forward on your behalf.

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5. More time to focus on new business

There’s no question that project managing the execution of your brand strategy takes you away from what you love. 

Putting your brand design in safe hands means you can free-up time to focus on other activities that add-value to your business, whether that’s reaching out to new clients, or starting with your next strategy project. 

Either way, hiring a design studio gives a brand strategist the perfect opportunity to offer clients a complete end-to-end service from market research right through to the launch of their new brand identity and Webflow website.

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“KHULA has been the missing link I’ve needed to deliver beautiful brands and websites that fit the brand strategy and copy I develop for clients. Jamie has solid communication skills. He answers questions quickly and in detail and is a genuinely positive person. I always leave our calls 1) impressed by the work he delivers; 2) in a good mood. For businesses looking to strengthen their brand and website, look no further!" — Reagan, Brand Strategist

Whether you’re a social media savvy solopreneur or bricks and mortar small business owner, you may have seen and heard a lot recently around the concept of ‘niching down’. 

Not only is there a hot debate about how to pronounce it correctly (for me, it rhymes with Quiché, for others it rhymes with rich) there’s also lots of discussion around whether it’s the right thing to do for small businesses and solopreneurs. 

The reason? Done right, knowing it's the right time to niche down can open up huge business benefits. Done wrong, it can close down potential business opportunities.

So first off, what do we mean by niching down?

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What is niching down? 

A niche is a specialized segment of a market for a particular product or service. So when we talk about niching down, we’re referring to the specific market you’re in, not your product. 

A niche product caters to a high specialized, low volume, consumer demand, which often leads to premium pricing. A good example of a niche product would be vinyl records, which attract music purists who value the authentic sound quality and packaging. 

In contrast, in a niche market, your product or service provides a very specific solution to a very specific problem. For instance, if you’re a personal trainer, then your target audience might be people who want to get fit. Niching down means refining that audience further. 

So, maybe you specialize in helping women get fit. 

Or maybe, you go deeper and your core audience is actually ‘busy mums who stay healthy’. 

Or, further still, working mums looking to build in exercise around work and childcare.

And so on. 

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You might be thinking that’s getting too niche, but the reason that niching down is no longer a limiting factor is that social media and the Internet now enable businesses to reach a smaller, more niche audience, on a global scale. 

Let’s start by taking a closer look at the reasons why some small businesses and solopreneurs decide to go niche.   

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Why do small businesses and solopreneurs go niche? 

So niching down has got your attention: it might be something you’re thinking about doing, or possibly something you’ve already done (maybe without even knowing it). You might be wondering why so many business owners make the choice to go more niche. Here are four common reasons for niching down:

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• When you go niche, you go deep. By specializing in a more specific niche, you create an opportunity to become a thought leader and go-to expert in your field.

• With a clearer idea of who your specific target audience is, such as working mums finding time to exercise around work and childcare, it’s much easier to create relevant content.

• By focusing on one, or a smaller set of problems, you can focus your attention on creating a more specific solution, or a set of solutions, that really resonate with your audience. 

• The most obvious reason to go niche is that when you narrow down to a particular target group, you automatically reduce the number of competitors. 

What is Google My Business?

Let’s start with what it’s not. 

Google My Business is not the same thing as your Google Business Profile. Instead, think of it as an additional layer of control over your Google Business Profile — one that allows you to optimize its visibility and effectiveness for driving traffic to your business and/or your business’s website. 

Your Google Business Profile is simply your business listing on Google. Setting up this profile (correctly) means your business appears on Google Maps and in local search results. Based on your business name, category, and address, a Business Profile is essentially the same as creating a pin in Google Maps.

Once verified by Google, your Business Profile will start to appear in local searches and provide customers with the opportunity to leave reviews and interact with your business. Google might even add additional, relevant content pulled in from other online sources. Clearly, as the business-owner, you want to have full control over your Business Profile.

So that’s where Google My Business comes in. This free tool allows you to optimize the content that appears on your Business Profile through search and maps. By setting it up, you not only have the ability to manage your profile, you’ll gain access to powerful functionality that can increase your online visibility.  

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Why do solopreneurs and small businesses need Google My Business?

According to research from Google, 60% of smartphone users contact businesses directly from the search results. And when you consider that (as of December 2021), Google accounted for 86% of the search market — that’s a huge amount of potential traffic heading your way.

Google My Business lets you take control of your Business Profile, so when customers search for you, you have a say in what they see and read about your business — from relevant images to customer reviews. Should your business hours change, move location, or temporarily close; all of that information can be updated and readily available at the fingertips of anyone searching you out.

The most obvious benefit of Google My Business for solopreneurs and small businesses is that it helps you get discovered. Your business listing helps customers find you on foot or online because you provide details like your address, opening times, website, and phone number. And if you’re a small business owner or solopreneur, your business’s pin will also appear in ‘nearby business’ searches on Google Maps. 

Another advantage of Google My Business is social proof in the form of ratings and reviews. Now, a good business has nothing to fear, but you may have understandable concerns about customers leaving negative and potentially harmful reviews. In fact, evidence suggests that customers find a mixture of reviews more trustworthy. Plus, you have the facility to respond, and openly demonstrate that you’re prepared to go the extra-mile for your customers. You can also request removal if a review doesn’t meet Google’s guidelines.    

As well as being an invaluable tool for building trust through social proof, Google My Business has the added benefit of enabling you to interact with customers by responding to reviews, answering questions, and direct messaging. This opens up a whole new channel for customer engagement with your brand and business. 

Once you’re up and running (more on that later) with Google My Business, you’ll very quickly start to accumulate data on your local search performance and audience. In a world of ‘big data’, any forward-thinking solopreneur or small business looking for growth would do well to take a data-driven approach. And while the path to actually doing that might be unclear for a lot of companies, Google My Business lowers the barrier to entry.

Another amazing thing about Google My Business are the powerful and simple-to-use analytical tools included — for free. You don’t need to be a computer scientist to uncover some useful insights, including:

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• Searches people made to find you.
• Unique users who viewed your profile.
• The number of customers requesting directions.
• Call button and website links clicks made.
• Bookings made (through a third-party provider).
• The number of unique conversations in your messaging.

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This data can also help you formulate a more effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. If you’re less technically inclined, SEO is simply the process of making web pages more visible to search engines (and customers). 

On a fundamental level, search engines need certain information to be able to effectively crawl (discover), index (imagine a library) and rank web pages. By optimizing your Google My Business content, you can increase your visibility in particular searches, based around specific keywords linked to your business category and geographic location (which is why the ‘searches people made to find you’ data is so handy). 

As we’ve already explored, every website requires SEO fundamentals to ensure pages get picked up and correctly categorized by search engines. But SEO really comes into its own when you’re competing on a local level.

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How can you use Google My Business to boost your SEO?

When you’re up against large, global competitors on the search engine results page (SERP) it can be tricky to keep your content on the first page of results (and most people don’t look beyond this). However, gaining a competitive advantage through well-optimized Google My Business content at a local level is very straightforward.

Start with your business description. You’re only allowed 750 characters — so make them count! In your description, include keywords associated with your business, including geographic information. Keep it natural-sounding. Try to do the same thing in any other written content you post, such as responses to reviews. 

For solopreneurs, another good tip is to include your company name alongside your own name when you input the name of your business. This means that whether people hear and remember your business name or you, they’re sure to find it more easily. 

Take this example from KHULA Design Studio^™ client, Kaelan Hanslo. A Google search for Kalean or his business, The Wellness Hub, Randburg, brings up the same Business Profile in the top-right panel. Try it!

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As with website SEO, you need to keep your written content natural-sounding, trustworthy, and on target. At the same time, you need to keep your data updated and as accurate as possible. 

Make sure any changes to your contact details, location, opening hours and so on are kept current. Making regular posts, including business photos, will also help signal an active business and improve your visibility. 

Google My Business allows you to add photos to ensure you’re making the right impression. Alongside your cover photo and logo, you’ll also want to include different photos to highlight key aspects of your business. They’re also a great way to differentiate your business from your competitors. 

Another tip is to rename photos before uploading them, ideally with some of your keywords. This should help to increase their visibility, and are another potential route for searchers to arrive at your Business Profile or website. Google’s research shows that businesses that add photos to their profiles receive 35% more click-throughs to their websites.