James: Hello everyone.
I'm James.
And welcome back to another episode of Behind the Madness, where
we talk about business growth.
Ways to work smarter and the fundamentals of business, all geared to unlocking
your brand's peak performance.
Though today, it's not about you.
And it's all about us.
That's right.
We put you to one side for one moment while we discuss everything about Method.
We have recently gone through a rebrand, which took many months.
This is the trouble of us having ongoing work and ongoing clients and having to
focus on your own brand or own website actually takes a longer than it does
for the projects that we take on.
But today that's what we're talking about, why we decided to rebrand.
Now to go over this topic with me, I am joined by Jamie and Paul.
Hello chaps.
How are we?
Jamie: Thanks James, really looking forward to this one.
It's really good to get the new brand out in the world and looking
forward to talking about the process.
Paul: Yeah, hi James.
That's been a work in progress for quite a while but we're there.
James: Now this whole brand started because you two got together on
Slack and decided to gang up on me and believe that I came up with the
great idea of going through a rebrand.
Jamie: Plant the seed, plant the seed
James: As it transpires I think you guys came up with it and this is
the joy of having a team that we do.
We all know when we need change and it's got to that point where we've
obviously built up the company.
We've got a few of us here now the message we were putting out on the website wasn't
really reflecting what we're doing, so, Jamie and Paul got together behind my
back and decided that it was about time.
We relooked at it and pushed it forward.
So, Jamie, what was your kind of first impressions?
Why, why did it kind of spring to light that it needed to be done?
Jamie: It was more of a, almost a modernization James It was looking
at our current brand and saying, was the information up to date?
Was it, where COVID has pushed businesses and our target
audience on the back of that.
But then it came from actually wanting a new landing page for our social media.
Much like most social media platforms, you can put a link in.
We saw our link we thought the Linktrees were a little bit ugly,
sorry Linktree, and so we thought a personalized landing page would be better.
We did a bit of a mock design and we thought bigger, we thought could we
push this to a brand of the website?
How our business comes across was very different from what we were seeing and
we thought let's plant that seed with James and let's move this forward.
James: And as a responsible business owner, I couldn't back down very much
the old tactics around a boat and being thrown off if I hadn't, so, it
obviously did make a lot of sense.
It was definitely something is.
Jamie says that we needed to do.
So our first stage is usually get something very, very quick that we
can all hang our hat on and something that we all kind of like, and is
reflecting what we want to do.
Which is why we threw the logo to start off with, over to Laura.
All kind of sat around and decided what we wanted out of the brand
and tried to create something that was more reflecting that.
We find that once we've got something that looks like what we want to achieve,
or feels a bit a bit more like what we want to achieve, everybody else can
then kind of get on board and we can, we can really build on it from there.
The design we had previously was quite a light design.
And when we looked at it against some other brands in the digital world where
we were pretty much alongside some of our competitors, we weren't standing
out enough so we knew we kind of had to start there with, with the logo.
But that was many months ago.
The trouble with having an organization like we have is we obviously
have clients who we have to serve and they have to come before us.
You know, it's the old builder analogy where the builder's house never has
any work done to it because he's always doing the work on other people's
and it's exactly the same with our organization with our business here,
we're always busy doing the day job.
So we had managed to get a logo design done by Laura.
and then we started to turn our attention really to our digital presence.
And where did we go to first Paul?
Paul: Well, I think as you mentioned, our logo, I was about 20 years old
Not a lot of companies stick with the same logo for as long as that.
So freshening it up was almost a must I think to keep it modern,
to keep it to the sort of changing landscape that we're working in.
So the next thing I think we were looking at was the web design.
And we got our web designers on the case who mocked up some pages for us.
Obviously we edited them over time and came up with what you can see
today, which I think is sort of a modern, fresher, more premium look.
James: We also simplified a lot of that user journey around of where people were
looking for content or understanding really what we offered it kind of changed
what we noticed is what we were saying on the phones and what we were saying
to clients wasn't the same as we had in the content on our website, so we
also had to look at changing that up.
And as soon as you're looking at a number of different factors around
your brand or around your digital presence then it becomes clear that
you've really got to change everything.
And again, that's, you know, where we kind of started to look at and and
reassess everything from the, from the content right up to the user experience.
Right down to the actual brand design itself.
Website's live, we have spent a lot of time, as I said, obviously it takes a lot
of time for us to actually get there with everything else that we've got going on.
But we also wanted to enrich that offering.
So Jamie, do you want to kind of touch a little bit on that, of what
we've also provided on our website?
Jamie: In the last year to 18 months we've become much more present on social
media, much more digital because the world's moved there, it had to And our
personality wasn't quite coming across.
We are very, very funny, we are lighthearted, but we love to make
people's business reap their potential.
So, this is what we tried to do with our whole attack on it.
Making sure that when you land on the website, you have fun interacting with it.
You can see the downloadables, you can find the content that will help grow your
business sometimes without even talking to us, because we are there to help, not
just to kind of pitch what we're doing.
Then you can come into our socials, you can see our reels you can drop
into our DMs and engage with us more.
So we're trying to make that holistic online experience for you.
Much much more complete.
You are why we have done this?
James: And that's it I think, you know, our personality certainly
doesn't come out on the podcast.
We turn into professional people that we try and get the best content out to you
guys when really we're good at doing that.
But we're a more lighthearted than we appear on the podcast, which
we are consciously trying to be better and be more like ourselves.
Jamie: It's new, and I think whenever you adopt something new, I think
it's really important that everyone out there really appreciates this
because when you do something new you almost go by the textbook and
you get learned behaviors into it.
And as you as you relax, as you become more practiced at this, we're
sitting round James's kitchen room table at the moment, and we've got
a couple of microphones we're having a chat, We're almost making those
sniggers, those jokes, each other and sometimes that doesn't come across
because you don't have that context.
So we are trying to throw the lighthearted side of what Method is making sure
that personal touch of, yeah, you can pick up the phone or drop us an email.
We will turn around and help you because that's what it's about.
And that's what our digital needed to represent more.
That's why we've done what we've done.
And we pivoted.
Thanks boys, anyone know the reference pop it in the comments.
James: So that's, that's kind of a little bit about why we had
to do it while we had to change.
And I think, as I said, that the content we were putting out
before was, the blogs were great.
The downloads were good as well.
And we've really, I think upped our game now of what we are producing.
The podcast we're going to try and get around my kitchen table a lot more often.
Maybe throw a bit of alcohol around, so we are more relaxed.
Jamie: Got to get that hand sanitizer.
James: And I think that's really what we want to be.
We want to be this podcast that you are going to gain some good content
some great tips from, but also you know, enjoy listening to as well.
And, and trying to find that balance is obviously something we've worked hard
on the content that we're producing, the detail that we're producing.
I think now we just need to get that more human touch for you guys.
Jamie: With that in mind, I'm going to jump in on you
James because before we wrap
James: It's going to jump in on me.
Jamie: I'm going to jump in on you.
That sounds much worse than it is in the kitchen room.
What can you give people in terms of a point of value or a couple of points
of why they should look at their brand?
Why it's such an important thing for any sort of long-term growth as a business,
we've spoken a lot about ourselves there.
So let's leave people with that to take away for them.
James: So every company is out there trying to solve a problem
for the customer, be that supply them with food, be that You know,
producing solutions for people.
So if you can focus on that problem and keep that at the forefront of what
you're doing in trying to answer those questions, that your, your buyer persona,
that we mentioned a lot is after.
Then you're not going to go too far wrong because you've put your customer
first and you're going to solve their problems through whatever you do.
If you are constantly thinking about their problems, they can
shift, they can change they are not always the same problems over time.
Problems can change.
We can come up with you know there could be technology that solves it, that we're
all using that issues that we have, or the pain points that we did have
disappear and new ones will replace them.
But knowing your customers, understanding them, getting feedback from them.
That's where you can have your finger on the pulse and really
understand what you're offering.
You know, we could have left our website.
We didn't have to change it.
We didn't have to update the content that was on it.
But we did because we knew we could do better, and rather
than wait until it was too late.
We striked early, and are now producing content that is building
on what we had, not waiting until what we had was out of date.
We we're now, you know, we're pivoting.
And knowing that that content has to, has to change and has to do better to
learn from what we've learned as well.
And you know, some of the content that we did have our old lead generators,
you know, the PDFs, the downloads, the things that we've got online
have also been updated and tweaked.
They're sexier and the message has changed.
slightly, you know we've come on We've we've all evolved And
that has to, has to reflect.
So a long story, but I think really focus on what your customer's needs are.
And it might change, and it probably will change and knowing when you
should change as a company is a lot easier if you understand
that your customers are changing.
And there you have it, thank you so much for listening.
The madness never stops, and we'll soon be back with our next chat so have your
say and let us know what you want to hear.