With Christmas almost upon us, here are 8 timely reminders of tasks you need to get done before heading off on your Christmas break.

1. Update holiday hours

Remember to update your holiday operating hours on your Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business), website and social media.

Don’t know how to set holiday hours in your Google Business Profile? Here’s how to do it.

Amazing what drinking craft gin with friends on a balmy summer’s day, smelling the sea breeze and watching the sun setting over the ocean leads to! Joy and happiness as well as the inspiration for our new brand colour palette. But more on that later...

A great brand connects your core purpose or your why with who you are, what you do and how you do it. As your business changes and evolves, it’s important to make sure that your brand identity is still aligned with your business and fit for purpose.

If you are targeting new customers, delivering new products or services, entering new markets, or quite simply, your logo is outdated, a rebrand or refresh may be needed. We’ve refreshed our brand to better align with our why. Here’s what led to the changes.

The general idea of collaborative partnerships is that two heads are better than one when it comes to solving challenges. They are a great way to introduce your business to a new market, expand your business and referral networks and offer new products and services to your customers. Leveraging the strengths and abilities of others can also help fill your skill and capacity gaps so you can focus on what you do best.

While collaborative partnerships are an excellent way to grow your business, often the hardest part is developing them! Here’s our short guide on how to get started and make your collaborations effective so they work for you.

Assessing and measuring the success of your current marketing campaigns is one of the most important parts of your marketing strategy. By understanding what went well and what didn’t, you can make more informed decisions about where to put your efforts, resources and budget for future marketing campaigns.

Assessing your marketing results can be challenging if you don’t know what to look for. So, let’s start with 5 easy ways to review and evaluate your marketing. We recommend you aim to do this at least once a month.

We’ve all seen the small statuettes of the three wise monkeys, one covering his eyes who sees no evil, another his ears who hears no evil, and another his mouth who speaks no evil. But what has this to do with gaining testimonials?

The proverb has many associations with being of good mind, speech and action. Which is exactly what testimonials will do for your business. Testimonials prove that your business is reputable, that the good things people hear about your business are true and that you can do what you say you can do.

The three monkeys approach to gaining testimonials is simple and easy to remember - LOOK, LISTEN, ASK

You’ve succeeded in getting lots of leads, converting as many as possible into clients, and maximising the price of the initial sale. So far, so good! But there’s one more key step which is maximising the lifetime value of these customers.

The name of the game here is retention. Keeping your existing customers happy so they buy from you time and time again is critical for increasing profitable sales in any business. In fact, existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more, on average, than new customers. Those are stats* that are hard to ignore!

So let’s get right into some easy ways to keep your customers happy and coming back for more. Here’s how with our top 7 tactics:

Marketing is all about making sure your business stands out from the rest. Over the holiday period, your mind will surely drift from thoughts about delicious food and keeping your tan even, to thoughts on how to promote your business and rise above the competition.

To help you and your business succeed, we have put together ten low-cost marketing tactics for you to consider over your break. They’ll help you connect with your customers and make the most of your marketing budget.

Starting a new business is a bit like going on a first date. You have prior knowledge of the person you are meeting and an expectation of things in common. You choose a look that you feel comfortable in and think will be attractive to them. You look forward to sharing your ideas, skills and passions with them. But at the back of your mind is a nagging fear that it will all go wrong and you would be better off cancelling and staying home with a cup of cocoa and a good book instead.

What if there was a way to ensure it was the beginning of your happy-ever-after instead?

Good news! There is a lot you can do in the preparation stage of setting up a new venture that will help make that happen.

Carolyn Brown - Copywriter

I am a freelance copywriter and compose various blogs, newsletters, social media posts and website copy for Muritai Group’s clients. Basically, any form of written material that requires sentences to be constructed in a way that is engaging and informative - I can do it.

 Jayden Ford - Marketing Coordinator

In my role as Marketing Coordinator at Muritai Group, I am able to help businesses thrive through creative solutions that are backed by up by research, understanding, and strategy. No day is ever the same, however, a large part of my role involves using digital content and social media to connect my clients with their ideal customers which helps them to achieve their business goals.

Four weeks down and the signs are positive that in a few weeks’ time, we may be able to return to our premises of work and interact face to face our customers again.

It has been a tough few weeks, so before I dive headfirst into the topic of this week’s blog, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the sacrifices we have all made in order to protect our vulnerable and break the chain of COVID-19. Our efforts have not been in vain, well done.

We know times are tough for business right now, so the content of this blog is dedicated to providing vital links of support that can help your business weather this storm. Some you may have already seen as they were mentioned in our last newsletter, but others have only been announced this week.  

Like many office-based businesses, getting ready to break the chain of COVID-19 was a mad scramble to ensure everyone could carry on as normal (that is, to paraphrase Prince Charles, whatever normal is) and keep working with our clients to ensure that their brands will stay in their customers’ minds while their products/services are temporarily out of action. Stationery, whiteboards, office chairs and computer screens all made their way out of the office in an organised rush before the call to stay safe, stay home came into effect.

Most of the Muritai team have had to create a space in their homes to accommodate our new office and adjust their mindsets in order to create mental separation between home and work, now that there isn’t a physical one. We turned to the internet for advice, where a Google search for “tips for working from home during COVID-19” turned up two hundred and ninety-five million results in the first instance. The gig economy sure has created a lot of experts in a short time!

Each of us at Muritai, however, has a different living situation and personal circumstance and we have quickly discovered that the standard tips for working from home do not necessarily work for everyone. Which is why we thought we would share with you a couple of the things that work for each of our differing needs:

In our previous blog “Your cheat sheet of 30 killer content marketing ideas”, we have focused on how to start a conversation with your customers and provided you with suggested topics to keep them interested in what you have to say.

Which is great, but none of that matters if your writing skills are so poor that the reader can’t make sense of what you have written and stops reading straight after the first couple of sentences. 

Here are our top tips to improve your writing and ensure that your readers come back for more.

Welcome back! I know you are eager to read the last 15 killer content marketing ideas, so I won’t keep you waiting any longer! 

Let’s continue, shall we?

Content either make or break your marketing. Great content can help you earn the right to your audience’s time while average content will be dismissed and ignored. Good content connects directly with your ideal customers’ wants and needs and provides them with reasons to believe in your business.

If you’ve struggled with writers' block and can’t think of any good content ideas to write about, then stress no more!

In this two-part series blog, I’ll share 30 killer content marketing ideas with you; 15 ideas first and then the rest in part 2.

Ready? Let’s dive in! 

CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve won a business award; the ultimate recognition of your hard work and dedication. Amongst the celebrations and high-fives, now is the time to let the rest of the world know too.

Let your customers share in your moment of glory. After all, they are partly responsible for your success, as without them you wouldn’t be in business for long!

So where do you start and how far should you go in spreading the news?

Here are our top ten ways to publicise your award:

Make your profile stand out from the crowd with these five simple changes:

• Use your headline to its full potential

  Your headline gives you opportunity to describe who you are and what you do, but in just one line. This isn’t always easy so it’s not surprising that most people end up with their current job title as the default option. Read HubSpot’s 4 tips for an effective LinkedIn headline. 

In our blog about Retaining Customers, we discovered an existing customer is likely to spend on average 60% more* than a new customer. That’s a stat hard to ignore! Keeping your existing customers happy so they buy from you again and again is a key strategy for increasing profitable sales in any business.

One such strategy is to recognise your customers who repeat purchase with something they want and value. A great way of doing this is by creating a simple and straightforward rewards programme.

There is a reason why traditional stamp card loyalty schemes are in most coffee shops – they work! Now days we are starting to see how technology can improve loyalty programmes such as these with quality data. Designed with ease of use in mind, here are our top 2 loyalty apps for small business:

•  Goody

Goody gives you everything you need to create loyalty programmes that connect with your customers through your online store.

Every time your customers make a purchase at your business, they earn and accumulate points that can be redeemed for rewards. Because you know them best, you can create goodies that you know your customers will love - and that work for your business too.

• The LittleMonkey Loyalty App

Based in Wellington, LittleMonkey have created a fully customisable app to suit your business’s needs. Unlike other options this one is branded to you and more importantly lists your company name in the app store, which means your customers are linked directly to you and not a third party.

Bonus tip – got heaps of loyalty cards in your wallet? Download the Stocard App and never have to go hunting in your wallet again! This free app securely stores your loyalty account numbers in one place, clearing up space in your wallet.

*Manta's and BIA/Kelsey's joint report "Achieving Big Customer Loyalty in a Small Business World"

Keeping your existing customers happy so they buy from you again and again is a key strategy for increasing profitable sales in any business. In fact, an existing customer is likely to spend on average 60% more* than a new customer. That’s a stat that’s hard to ignore!

Your customers have choice; they can choose to stay with you or buy from somewhere else. That means your goal is to be the best option for your customers. It sounds obvious but if you are the best option, your customers won’t want to buy from someone else. 

It's Maori Language Week!

This year is all about showing New Zealand that there is a place for the Māori language in all areas of life, from our sports fields and stadiums, to the news and the ever-growing realm of social media. This annual campaign is about raising awareness that New Zealand has its very own language and encouraging the use of it, with simple phrases every day, week and month of the year.

To celebrate, we thought we would share a few phrases you can use in your everyday business interactions