I write mostly about Marketing, a little bit about life. www.brandyourselfbetter.com | Connect on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/dan-hopper-branding-marketing/

What is a brand identity, and why does it matter?

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A common mistake from beginner marketers is confusing their business's brand image with their brand identity. I get it. They sound similar and are related concepts.

But they are not the same thing.

Brand identity is what we think our brand is, and the brand image is what customers believe our brand is.

However, our brand identity does influence how our brand image is perceived.

This article explores what a brand identity is, its importance and strategies a business can use to create its own brand identity.

Brand identity influences the brand image

Brand image is distinct from brand identity.

A brand’s identity is its intent…

Investing money into Google Ads is not cheap — having a strategy will get you better results.

How to optimise pay per click ads
How to optimise pay per click ads

The first place that many people use to search for information about a product, service, or brand, is an online search — Google.

We have access to all the information we will need from the convenience of our computers or mobile phones. If a business wants customers to find them online, they must optimise their search engines' presence to find them before their competitors.

There are two ways to do this, SEO and pay-per-click ads.

Read on to learn how pay-per-click advertising works to optimise your strategy to achieve better results — more clicks and more conversions.

What Is Pay-per-Click (PPC) Advertising?

Pay-per-click advertising is…

A Positioning Strategy Guide

What is your unique way of providing value to customers?

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Your market position is where your brand sits in the hearts and minds of customers.

The associations that consumers hold with the brand reflect its positioning in the market.

This week’s blog explores positioning as a marketing strategy. The relationship between positioning and other essential marketing strategies are discussed, along with five common positioning strategies brands use.

“A position that takes into consideration not only a company’s own strengths and weaknesses, but those of its competitors as well.” (Ries & Trout, 2001)

What Is Positioning?

Firms use positioning to create an image of their product or service in their target customers' minds.

Email marketing has become a popular marketing and sales techniques across all types of businesses for one key reason: it works.

What is email marketing?
What is email marketing?

Since it rose quickly to prominence and the internet about 25 years ago, email marketing has become widely used by businesses.

Email is widely used as a marketing tool for businesses to communicate with their target market and as a relationship management tool to communicate directly with existing customers.

In 2020, a vast majority of people now used email daily to communicate with each other. Either with friends and family, work colleagues, or perhaps to sign up to receive more information about a brand or product that interests them.

What is Email Marketing?

Short for electronic mail, email sends messages to one or more…

A guide to target marketing

Not everyone is going to be a good customer.

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Often when you ask a small business owner who they are targeting as customers, their response is “Everyone”, or “Anybody interested in…”

They might refine this audience down to “homeowners” or “people who go to the gym”.

This audience is still too broad.

The problem is that not all consumers think alike, and not everyone is going to purchase your product. Because of this broad focus, marketing can miss the mark.

Instead of trying to market to everybody, targeted marketing makes your product or service as attractive as possible to specific groups of people. …

Marketing lies, steroid use, and more lies.

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Deceit is a foundation for much of the fitness industry.

Think back to the early 90s when television bombarded us with fitness infomercials. They sold us the idea that a simple piece of fitness equipment would give us abs in a matter of just “five minutes a day”.

Absolutely no scientific evidence was required. The evidence was how the fitness models in the ad look.

Social proof is what marketers call it. Or bullshit.

It was probably the first time in their lives that the model had used that piece of equipment.

They’ve dedicated their life to being fit and…

How does marketing change when the customer is a business instead of consumers?

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It is a marketing fundamental to make a product or service as attractive as possible to the most suitable customer.

Marketers must positively influence a customer’s decision-making.

However, a customer’s s decision-making process is not always the same.

The decision to purchase a car, holiday or a new ice cream brand will differ from how the same person makes a business decision, such as what printer to buy.

Therefore, the way businesses market products or services for consumers will differ from how businesses market products or services for other businesses.

This article explores the critical differences between B2B and B2C…

Learning these key theories will help us to improve decision-making in our business.

Theories that every marketer should understand
Theories that every marketer should understand

Smart people come up with theories and frameworks to help us better understand how things work.

Business is no different.

As a business owner or marketer, if we have a broad understanding of the underlying processes behind how business works and how customer behave, the more objective we can be with our decision-making.

Meaning we have a better chance of success.

This article explores five theories and models that all business owners and marketers should understanding.

The Ansoff Matrix

The first theory is the Ansoff Matrix, a popular framework for decision-making about growth and expansion strategies. H. …

And, she probably conceived a child that night.

A broken heart
A broken heart

The title is a bit clickbaity, but it is literally what happened.

We had an 18-month old son. It broke my heart.

In hindsight, it was one of the best things that have ever happened to me.

Here’s what happened — it reads like a storyline out of a daytime soap.


I was 21 years old, and our son was about 18 months old.

My ex-partner was a couple of years younger than me. I will refer to her as my partner, or ‘she’ or ‘her’ from this point, being the story's subject.

We started dating when I was 18…

New Zealand travel tips from a Kiwi

We’re famous for our beautiful landscapes, and here are some of our best beaches.

Hahei beach — Coromandel, New Zealand
Hahei beach — Coromandel, New Zealand

New Zealand is known for its natural beauty. Case in point: the filming of the Lord of the Rings movie franchise was here.

The was mostly mountains and stuff — but our beautiful landscapes extend to the beaches.

What are New Zealand’s best beaches?

Here are some summer spots you should check out if you are ever on the North Island of New Zealand.

In my opinion, of course. It can never be an objective list. Unless someone invents some beach-rating algorithm…

This is a selection of some photos I have taken from my favourite New Zealand beaches.

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