Tag: Marketing Agency

Community-based Marketing

Posted on by fruityadmin
Community

Community-based Marketing

What is Community-based Marketing?

Community-based marketing is a people-first approach to marketing. It’s all about

bringing like-minded people together who have a common goal, need or interest. In everyday life people thrive in communities, and this is starting to become more obvious in the consumerism world. When people feel part of a brand community, it creates more awareness and trust of the business, eventually resulting in more sales and better customer retention. Not to mention, the cost of marketing to a new audience is six to seven times more expensive than marketing to your current customer-base…The value speaks for itself.

 

Prioritise meaningful relationships

The key to successful community-based marketing is prioritising meaningful relationships with your customers and business partners over transactional ones. By focusing on building relationships, not only do you save marketing dollars, but you also show your community that you stand for more than just profits; that a relationship with your brand is a valuable experience worthy of investment (in terms of both time and money).

It’s important to note that community-based marketing can’t be achieved overnight. It’s a long-term strategy that reaps long-term rewards – and loyal customers.

 

Integrate community-based marketing

If you haven’t already, consider integrating community-based marketing into your marketing activities. Getting started on social media is simple. Reply to comments, share user-generated content and thank customers for leaving reviews. Email marketing can be harnessed to nurture brand communities too. You could create a sense of FOMO by sharing exclusive information or behind-the-scenes content. Perhaps you could offer your database exclusive special deals and discounts, pre-sale opportunities and event invitations to increase their sense of belonging to your brand community. Ultimately, by actively acknowledging, interacting, and respecting your customers, you’ll gain their loyalty.

Community-based marketing is not only alive online. There is space for this strategy in the real world too.  It is very important for your community to see you supporting their interests in some way. This can be achieved through brand events, collaboration, sponsorship and general support of your community. For small businesses in the Northern Rivers, supporting your local community, especially in times of need, is extremely important for successful community-based marketing.

What you put in, is what you get out of it when it comes to community-based marketing. The more you empower your customers, the more they will feel a valued part of your community, and the more loyal they will become to you and your brand.

 

As always, stay fruity,

Barefruit.

Related tag: email marketing gold coast

Barefruit Marketing Win Employer of Choice!

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Barefruit Marketing win Employer of Choice

We are so excited to share that Barefruit Marketing won Employer of Choice at the 2022 Northern Rivers Regional Business Awards on Saturday, October 22nd. This is a recognition and reflection of the wonderful culture we have at Barefruit.

We were nominated in five different categories for the night:

  • Outstanding Employee: Ashleigh Cameron
  • Outstanding Leader: Claire Harding
  • Excellence in Sustainability
  • Employer of Choice
  • Excellence in Small Business.

Over 10 years ago, Claire and Evan Harding – marketing professionals with over 40 years’ of combined experience - moved from London to the Northern Rivers. It was here, in Lennox, that the Harding family set up their home-based business, Barefruit Marketing. A boutique agency focused on inspirational, creative marketing that would really work, and in essence, help businesses ‘bear fruit’. Fast-forward to 2022, Barefruit Marketing has expanded to a full-service agency with a diverse team of ten, fostering an amazing culture that they have all worked so hard to create.

Part of our team got all dressed up and attended the ‘2022 Northern Rivers Regional Business Awards’ at Southern Cross University in Lismore. The past couple of years have been extremely challenging for small businesses in the Northern Rivers with lockdowns, floods and other obstacles to overcome. The event celebrated business in the Northern Rivers and recognised the resilience and hard work that goes on behind the scenes within our community.

There were many well-known local businesses nominated for these awards. Thrilled and emotional, we were awarded ‘2022 Employer of Choice’. We were also ecstatic for our client Early Up Property Solutions who won ‘Excellence in Small Business’, an amazing achievement. Employer of Choice is a great reflection of Barefruit as a workplace as we pride ourselves in creating a fun, creative, open, and supportive workplace for our team.

Claire and Evan with award

Our Co-founder and Director Claire comments, “Winning Employer of Choice makes me really proud. We are very passionate about the values we all hold both personally and at work – that is what makes our agency tick.”

Claire continues; “Leading Barefruit is FUN! We, and our clients, are lucky to have such amazing talent at the agency. We spend more time with our workmates than our own families so having a good culture and an open and honest environment is so important. The team genuinely care about each other and support each other professionally and personally.

We’re fun to work with, we don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we take the work we do for our clients very seriously.”

She concludes; “A good culture attracts the right talent and the right clients and I believe we currently have that spot on.”

Jane Laverty, the Regional Director for Business NSW said, “A huge congratulations to Barefruit Marketing, they are so well deserving of being recognised as finalists in the Northern Rivers Regional Business Awards program – across 5 categories no less.

Their work with business and industry and in the community is so highly regarded because of their creative solutions - and also their passionate staff culture. It’s a milestone year for the team having just turned 10 and this is significant when operating from a regional area and further proof of their excellence… I wish the Barefruit team every success.”

Related tag: marketing gold coast

Northern Rivers Business Awards

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Northern Rivers Rail Trail

How to Develop a Creative Strategy

Posted on by fruityadmin

Having a solid creative strategy for your campaigns can set you apart from your competitors. Your creative strategy is all about defining what your advertising goals are, and planning on how you are going to achieve them through innovative advertising and marketing approaches that will appeal to your audience. For example, using humour to appeal to your audience or showcase everyday use of your product through a series of social videos.

For business owners, we know this can sound overwhelming. However, spending time planning a strategy ensures your campaign has purpose, direction and goals to achieve. It makes the rest of the work involved in building a campaign much easier too. Let us break it down for you.

Define your goals

What do you want your advertising to achieve? Every campaign has different goals, whether that is to grow your audience, generate more leads, make more sales or  something else. It’s important to set both short term and long term goals that are financial and non-financial (it isn’t always about the moolah). Our top tip is to use the SMART model when writing goals for your campaign…and keep the number of goals for a campaign to one or two, maximum.

creative strategy development
Write a creative strategy statement

Now use your goals to develop a creative strategy statement. This statement is like a mission statement that outlines how you aim to achieve these goals. It should focus on the reason for the creative strategy, who you are aiming to appeal to and through what creative approach.

Choose your KPIs

Use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track your campaign and check whether you’re on the way to achieving your goal or not. KIPs are dependent on what your goals are. For example, if your goal is to grow your audience, then your KPIs might be increase of social media following and increase of website and/ or foot traffic. If your ad is running on Facebook and Instagram, you will be able to access real-time data about its performance in Ads Manager.

strategy brand
Determine your target audience and message

Defining your audience is arguably the most important aspect of your strategy because it determines how you will craft your message. The length, tone and delivery of your message will depend on your target audience and their values. Other things to consider is what the content will look like, and where it will appear.

Set your dates

The last step of your creative strategy is to develop a timeline for your campaign. This is usually split into the time spent creating and implementing the strategy, when and how long the campaign will run for, and dates to see results. Timelines helps with the allocation of resources and keeps everyone involved in the project accountable.

 

With these steps, your will set your business up for a successful campaign that has purpose and will (hopefully) result in the achievement of your goal.

Related tag: advertising gold coast

 

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Northern Rivers Rail Trail

A Guide to Email Marketing

Posted on by fruityadmin
Email Marketing 101

We know things are crazy at the moment for our local businesses. It’s a big juggle managing staff shortages, implications to supply chains and the ever-changing regulations, but there is one thing you can do to help your business maintain sales in this time, and that’s Email Marketing.

Email Marketing is your best friend. It’s one of the most effective ways to engage and build relationships with your customers, subscribers and leads. Why? Because you’re communicating with people who have already shown interest and see value in your business offering, and because of this they are much easier to nurture and convert into customers (and sales). Email Marketing on the Gold Coast can provide that extra push to move these people from the start to the end of the consumer journey.

The Golden Rule

Email Marketing is not about you or your brand, it’s about your audience. You need to really get in the mind of your target audience and create content you know they will value and engage with. Keep things simple to begin with and segment your contact list into customers and leads.

With your leads, your communication should give them the information and tools (in a non-salesy way) to make a purchase decision. Maybe that looks like behind the scenes content, product features and/or exclusive discounts. When it comes to your customers, Email Marketing is all about nurturing the relationship and doing what you can to get the most out of their appreciation for your brand, for example, tips on how to care for their purchase, how to use it in unconventional ways, loyalty and referral programs and asking them to leave a review. Top tip: offer something of value to your readers in exchange for an action, for example leaving a review, because if there is something in it for you, there has to be something in it for them.

Email Marketing
Automation

If you have a little time up your sleeve (perhaps when you’re isolating at home 😳), setting up and automating a series of emails is the best thing you can do. Create a flow that a takes a newsletter subscriber or new customer on a journey to learn more about who you are and the products or services they are specifically interested in. The automated flow means all your new customers and subscribers are regularly reminded about your brand automatically. Remember, the content in these emails must be targeted to the reader (customers and leads need different information). Mailchimp is the place to get started and there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube to help when you get stuck.

Reach your readers in their inbox at the right time, with relevant and personalised content in a consistent manner and it’s more likely you’ll make more sales. Remember, there is a fine balance when it comes to how often you should reach customers on email. Don’t be a spammer - touching base with your valuable contact list every week or two is more than enough.

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Northern Rivers Rail Trail

Barefoot Marketing? No, we’re BareFRUIT Marketing

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Barefruit or Barefoot

Thanks to the Barefoot Investor, we can’t tell you how often people call us Barefoot Marketing. The time has come to settle it once and for all. We are called Barefruit Marketing. That’s Bare, like naked and Fruit like, apples and oranges.

What’s in a name

Talking about names, now is a great opportunity to give you a little insight into to how and why we landed with the name Barefruit Marketing. The agency, founded by Claire from her loungeroom, was established to help local businesses grow and flourish. Business owners in the Northern Rivers (and anywhere for that matter) are so good at what they do, but often, they don’t have the time and energy to spend marketing their business. We all know that marketing is key to the success of any business, big or small. And so, the agency was born.

How it came together

When working with businesses who don’t have the time and energy to think about marketing, we discovered we needed to be completely transparent; we tell it how it is, no jargon, no waffle and no round-about explanations. From this, came the ‘Bare’ part of the Barefruit name. Being real with our clients, suppliers and team is one of our values. What you see is what you get, so ‘Bare’ which means ‘having no cover up’ fits the agency’s mission perfectly.

As marketers, our ultimate goal is to grow business for our clients. We work hard to see them increase sales and be successful and self-sufficient. As such, we are helping businesses bear the fruits of success and this is how the word ‘fruit’ came into the mix. With that, Claire and Evan named the agency Barefruit Marketing. What’s more, the word play in ‘helping businesses to bare fruit’ was too perfect to ignore.

Helping Businesses Bare Fruit
The Barefruit brand values

It’s really important that a business name reflects its output, as well as what that business stands for. Our brand values determine who we are and guide the way in which we work as employees and operate as a business. At Barefruit, we’re Curious, Real, Brave and Fun.

 

Curious

We are naturally curious. We allow ourselves to explore the less obvious, ask lots of questions and invite debate. We encourage a working environment that stimulates ideas, smart thinking and meaningful personal growth.

 

Real

We are honest and transparent. What you see is what you get. We are down to earth. No jargon. Plain speaking. We are realistic, we won’t over promise.

 

Brave

We strive to create an environment that supports instinctive and insightful thought – whether it supports or challenges the status quo. We are passionate and well-tuned, unafraid to push boundaries and have the confidence to trust our gut and pursue our beliefs.

 

Fun

We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We like to have a laugh at work and with our clients. Coming to work is fun.

Our services
What we do at Barefruit Marketing

We are a full service, creative agency which means we have the resources to implement any idea (as long as it not too far-fetched). From digital campaigns, websites, TV commercials and PR to events, flyers, SEO and logo refreshes, we pride ourselves on our ability to develop and implement the best solutions for our clients. Our services include (but aren’t limited to):

The Barefruit team is made up of a diverse group of marketing specialists with international talent. We've worked on the big clients in the big cities, and want to offer that same service to businesses in our community. Of course, we also have clients interstate and even across the globe.

 

Our team

If you’re going to take anything away from this, we are Barefruit Marketing, not Barefoot Marketing. Should you ever need help with marketing your business, or know of a friend who might, remember Barefruit Marketing. And even if you don’t, we’ve made sure our website will come up in our search results even if you remember us a Barefoot Marketing.

See our work...

What clients are saying

It was great working with Jennica and Claire from Barefruit Marketing. They really took time to understand my project and delivered amazing ‘pitch’ / media release to appeal to journalists and media corporations. I felt comfortable sharing my ideas, and they were able to capture my vision and marry it to their expertise. Would highly recommend.

Alex Bosin

EV Classic

I'd like to say a huge thank you to Claire and Charlotte from Barefruit Marketing who have helped me in the last couple of months to pull this amazing media event together. The agency has offered their services on a pro bono basis, I am so grateful for the work they have done. Claire and Charlotte have been my unconditional support crew to lean on for advice and ideas, and I am excited about how our relationship will move forward in the next few months.

Kate Kempshall

North Coast Community College

I have been using Barefruit for my SEO and website development for Behind the Barrel. The best part about Barefruit is your're not just getting the attention of one of their staff members. The whole team works together to help bring the best possible outcome for your business marketing. I highly recommend Evan and his team if you want to take your business marketing to the next level.

Jarryd

Behind the Barrel

The Barefruit team is always friendly, helpful and very professional. They have taken the time to understand our business needs and develop a effective strategy to grow our brand.

Andrew Illingworth

Tweed Coast Holiday Parks

Just want to say a HUGE thank you to each and every one of the team for the website. You all went over and above and most certainly went above my expectations. I'm extremely happy with it (been bragging a bit about it just quietly) and couldn't have done it without you all. Thank you for bringing this to life.

Trent Chapman

Prevent Consultants

Marketing, even when you’re crazy busy

Posted on by fruityadmin
Juggling Marketing When You're Busy

Our region has been so fortunate to have had so much business recently. We’ve heard that many local businesses have been overwhelmed with demand. Considering how difficult 2020 was, this is an amazing place to be so soon after. Whether you’re crazy busy with high demand, expanding your business or working towards getting back to pre-COVID times, marketing is always important.

Marketing does help drive sales, and so much more than that. So even if you think you’re busy now, you’d be taking a big gamble to let it slide from your business strategy. The Northern Rivers has been flooded with visitors, and your marketing tells these people why they should consider you. Without these messages, your competitors will be thanking you.

In It to Win It

If you’re not in the game, you can’t win. Good marketing makes consumers think of you first when they need the product or service you offer. The brand awareness, interest and desire for your brand will impact your sales positively, no doubt. Keeping up with social media, traditional advertising, emails, digital marketing, SEO (whatever forms your strategy) keeps your brand in the forefront of consumer’s minds. If you drop your marketing efforts, even from just one channel, your competitors will already be ahead of you. Vying for consumer’s attention is a competitive game, so you must always play if you’re serious about growing your business.

Slow and Steady

It’s hard to keep up with marketing when you’re busy but you can’t let it take a back, or even a side seat. Consistency always wins. Right now is a great opportunity to put long-term marketing strategies in place to drive awareness and sales for the future. With a surge in domestic travel and people moving to the area, you can expect to see business steady all year round and your marketing efforts need to reflect this. You’ll need to continuously communicate with visitors, the locals and the new people arriving in our area. Businesses that never stop marketing experience a forward-momentum situation, like a train getting faster and faster along the tracks. Don’t slam the brakes on your marketing when you’re busy - doing so could slow down your sales in the future. To maintain sales (and to grow them!), be consistent.

Always Communicate

Tactics such as social media marketing, email marketing, print, TV advertising and PR help you tell your brand story. The more you communicate value to consumers, the more they consider you a voice of authority in the industry, especially if you’ve got something interesting, valuable or different to say. In 2021, brand activism is extremely important to influence purchase decision-making, so tell your story and communicate your brand’s personality to consumers.

Having a long-term strategy and consistency in your marketing activities helps you compete against your competitors, maintain and drive sales in the future and grow your business. To keep moving forward, don’t stop what you’re doing.

Related Tag: Marketing Gold Coast

How to write a Press Release

Posted on by fruityadmin

We’ve all been waiting for it, and finally 2021 is here. Over the holidays Lennox has been buzzing with visitors. It’s been fantastic to see local businesses being supported after such a trying year.

Success stories are popping up all over the place and if that’s you, it should be part of your marketing strategy to tell people about it. Social media is great at spreading awareness, but a story in the media, whether in a newspaper, magazine or on the TV or radio is unparalleled. Getting your story ‘published’ is the best form of word-of-mouth marketing you can get. We refer to this as ‘earned media’ and it is more trusted and credible to the viewer than ‘paid (owned) media’ as it is seen as unbiased. Naturally, people get talking and before you know it, you will hopefully see an impact on your business in terms of customers and sales.

When something newsworthy happens, let the media know about it by sending them a press release. Journalists are busy bees, so when writing a press release, there is a bit of a recipe to follow to make their life easier.

  1. A Strong and Informative Title

The title is the first thing the journalist will read, so it must clearly describe your story, grab attention and not be too long. This will become your email subject when you send press release out to publications. If it’s boring, the email won’t be opened.

 

  1. Your Subheading is Everything

Journalists receive hundreds of press releases, so don’t have time to read them all. Write a sentence or two that sums up your story and this will become your subheading. Make sure you answer all the Who, Where, When, What, How and Why questions.

 

  1. Talk about the Important Things First

Your press release is not an essay. Like a news article, you need to include the most important and relevant information towards the beginning. When you’ve done this, you can go into more detail, adding quotes and interesting facts about your story.

 

  1. Include Photos with People in Them

Send photos (with people in them) along with your press release. Photos make things more engaging for readers and helps them relate to your story. By including a variety of photos that are captioned, you’ll give your story a better chance of being published.

 

  1. Quotes are important 

Boost the credibility of your story with quotes from the business owners, customers, members of the community…whoever is relevant.

 

  1. Your contact details

Often, journalists will want to get in touch to organise interviews, take photos or learn more. Include your contact details, so they can get in touch.

 

  1. Boilerplate

Appearing at the bottom of every press release, is an outline of your company, products, services, awards and website and social links.

 

And with that fine-tuned recipe, you’ll have a press release ready to send to publications. Happy writing !

Related tag: Digital Marketing Byron Bay

 

2020 at Barefruit Marketing

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Barefruit in 2020

This is the last time we talk about 2020, we promise! Although it was a weird year last year, many lessons were learnt along the way. We’re looking back to 2020 to recognise and acknowledge our growth, our flexibility, our productivity and our teamwork (oh, and the funny times too!).

Full of hope and motivation for the beginning of a new decade, 2020 started off with a bang. Everyone was feeling refreshed for the new year after a break over the Christmas holidays. The bush fires that had devastated regional and remote NSW had finally come to an end and, truthfully spirits were high. Then came along COVID-19 and little did we know how much this virus might have on the world as we knew it.

As Australia’s cases rose, restrictions around the country tightened. Before we knew it, the Barefruit office closed, and we were all sent home to work on reduced hours. It was so difficult to see our many of our clients and local businesses really struggle through the first lockdown. Much of our work was put on hold, however our rebrand project for Korff Wealth continued on amongst a few other projects. This included the beginnings of Rafiki Zabibu wine...check it out here.

We saw the opportunity for Korff Wealth, a financial services boutique to roll out their rebrand while Australia was in lockdown. Why? Because more than ever before, Australians were turning to experts for financial advice. It was an exciting and challenging time for the Barefruit team, working over the phone and internet to deliver a rebranding project.

After 60 days at home, it was finally time for the kids to head back to school which meant we got to go back to the office. Thank goodness! It was unprecedented times for our clients, with business slowly starting back up in our town. We dialled up our flexibility to deliver a ‘Back2Business’ campaign, including coaching programs and marketing packages to generate new leads. We also worked to help our clients take advantage of government grants that were available for small businesses to use for marketing and communications. Our ability to capitalise on opportunities such as these was essential to the success we have seen in recent months, and we feel very proud about it.

Along came July and our pregnant Agency Manager, Cat, was due to have her a baby very soon. It was time for Barefruit to bring on a new employee to fill Cat’s position. And so, we welcomed Charlotte into an Account Executive position. We can’t quite believe that we were not only able to survive 2020 as a business, but we also were able to expand the team. In fact, we even needed to get Sara, our previous Agency Manager, back in for a day a week as Charlotte moved onto more and more client work. On 29 August, Cat welcomed her little girl, Bonnie, earth-side. The new Barefruit bubba has visited us a few times since, and she is absolutely gorgeous.

As business continued to improve in our local town, we were awarded with more and more projects from existing and new clients. In September, we helped North Coast Community College launch their new Primary Industries Training Centre. This was a major highlight of our year. We worked to organise a launch event for this new training centre and series of certificate III qualifications, while simultaneously creating media buzz and as much free publicity about it as possible. The event was a huge success with dignitaries, local publications and special guests all in attendance. From this, numerous articles were written about the new NCCC Primary Industries Training Centre, and NBN ran a feature on the local news the evening of the event. Read more about the fantastic day it was here.

The second half of 2020 really flew by. Before we knew it, it was Spring, and business was returning to normal in our regional town. Not to mention the onslaught of tourists from Sydney and Brisbane who greatly helped business in the Northern Rivers recover from the impacts of lockdown. We worked with artist Len Collins to set up a new website, multiple shoots for Tweed Holidays Parks took place, we worked with a start-up to create a company name and branding. We organised a Golf Day event with Northern Rivers Food in return for event sponsorship, continued ongoing work for all our retainer clients and saw our beer packaging design on the shelves of bottle shops. Recently we were awarded a TVC job for Raine and Horne.

After 414+ creative briefs, 500+ hours of pro bono work, 15 new websites and 15+ new branding projects we wrapped the year up, celebrating with a fantastic Christmas Party with Behind the Barrel. Thank you to everyone who made the year it was at Barefruit. We are forever grateful to be where we are today in 2021, thanks to the support of our staff, our clients and the local community.

Related Tag: Digital Marketing Byron Bay

Barefruit 2020 infographic

Indigenous farming on offer at Wollongbar college

Posted on by fruityadmin

Barefruit assisted North Coast Community College with the launch of their new Primary Industries Training Centre. This involved creating media buzz to generate free publicity. Our PR strategy involved sending out a press release to the media before and after the event to engage local publications. The Byron Echo, followed up our press release with an article about the new training centre in Wollongbar.

The Echo's focus was informing the public about the indigenous aspect of the new, unique Cert. III qualifications. It's a first for our local area, and perhaps one in the State (who knows, maybe even nation-wide). The collaboration between North Coast Community College and the DPI extends also to the local indigenous tribe. The new qualifications all have a Cultural unit, taught by Cultural Trainer, Tracy King. She said, ‘As a Bundjalung woman with cultural connections through kinship throughout the Bundjalung Nation, I am very passionate and a firm believer in Aboriginal cultural and heritage values to use as a tool for future generations’.

You can read more this project here.