✦ The purpose of Vermilion Pinstripes is to create Happy Businesses and to help them thrive with confidence. Through the last decade, many clients have rekindled their passion for their business with a boost from Vermilion Pinstripes.
Vermilion Pinstripes is an international modern sales marketing and communications agency based in Australia and Singapore. By harnessing the power of the team's collective expertise in business, communications, marketing and technology, Vermilion Pinstripes has helped brands deliver definite business results. With their trademark Modern Marketing Framework, they have been guiding teams to Sell Without Selling, orchestrating the customer's journey as one voice, one brand.
“Marketing is really just about sharing your passion.” — Michael Hyatt, NY Times Best Selling Author
And that's what Vermilion Pinstripes has been doing through the years. It's not just the team itself that enjoys the creative impulse of Modern Marketing, but they have also been helping their clients find the joy in their business, and to generate a passion for really growing it.
Find out how Vermilion Pinstripes has been helping their clients achieve the results they desired.
Old school marketing
Think old school marketing and you'd probably conjure up images of posters, flyers, leaflets handed out in the street, huge billboards on long drives, cheesy advertisements on TV or a radio ad jingle you just can't get out of your head, cold calls, snail mail, door-to-door sales. The messages we received from all these ads, regardless of their industry was mostly about how they are the best and that it'll be really good for us to purchase them.
Could your grandparents ever have imagined what Tik Tok is or even how powerful and extensive its influence could be? Or that you don't need to have a physical human salesperson in front of you to deliver a product and collect your payment, that you could just click on a screen and that's it?
Marketing in even just the last few years has changed. And that is one thing that stands out about Modern Marketing. You have got to keep up. Adapt. Be agile. Be flexible. Never stop innovating.
Vermilion Pinstripes has certainly seen their fair share of the evolution of marketing. What are some of the highlights of the changes over time in marketing?
Customer is still king
But that's not new, you say. The customer is always right. We've heard that for eons! Yes, businesses may have put customers on a pedestal but businesses did not really know their customers well. At all. Marketing in the past placed importance on the company or brand itself. That's why brands were always saying how they are the best, and one brand's message was not that different from the next's. They didn't care who the customers were. As long as there's a human, the business would want to start selling how great they are.
“Content marketing is really like a first date. If all you do is talk about yourself, there won’t be a second date.” – David Beebe, Founder & CEO, Storified Hospitality Group
Nowadays, marketing is not about yakking about your brand. You need to shine the spotlight on the customers, for real.
Modern Marketing is customer-centric. What this means is it prioritises the needs and interests of customers in everything marketing does. It's no longer about trying to win over the hearts of every human. It's about being very specific who your customers are, the type of customers, what drives them, what repels them, what attracts them, what creates desire in them, what problems they have and the solutions you can offer. You really have to know your customers well. The key point here is business now want to know how their product or service can improve some aspect of the customer's work or life.
McKinsey found that “companies with a customer-centric, data-driven marketing and sales platform improve marketing ROI by 15-20% or more.” (Source: HelpScout)
Get a free worksheet from Vermilion Pinstripes to help you define your customer avatar. Having an accurate profile of your customer type can help you focus your marketing strategies and campaigns, ensuring a more focused and relevant approach without wasting valuable resources aiming for customers who wouldn't be interested in you.
Does your brand have a voice?
Gone are the days where a business is just a business to facilitate the transaction of services and products. Nowadays, if your brand doesn't have a voice, you're not going to get very far.
“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories, and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” — Seth Godin, Founder & CEO, Do You Zoom
That's why brand messaging is so important. It is what helps customers to understand your business. It gives your brand a voice. One that is easily recognisable immediately and anywhere. It's incredibly powerful. Just think Disney. What comes to your mind? Magic. Happiness. And your brain simply takes off and generates a whole series of beautiful images, and endorphins flood your system. Disney's marketing department certainly worked hard to put all the right ingredients in their magical cauldron of brand messaging.
Your brand message expresses clearly why your business is useful, and what your values are, thereby triggering a deep desire for these products and services. When people joke about how their business is like their baby, it's not just about the amount of time, effort and money spent on growing it. It's also really about giving their business an identity, a look, a feel that makes it unique. Do your brand messaging well and you'll stand out from the crowd.
Vermilion Pinstripes uses their Modern Marketing Framework to help clients find and refine their brand message to help them stand out in a competitive marketplace. The first step is precisely the Brand Message.
Winning example:
TG's Child Care has been a long standing client with Vermilion Pinstripes. Their brand messaging is a strong one. As the stewardship of the children's future, TG's Child Care is leading the way in Playing is Learning for Life, and Playing it Forward into the future. From revamping their website to handling their blogs, social media posts and articles on Brilliant-Online magazine, Vermilion Pinstripes makes sure their brand message is kept consistent across the different mediums. Even when a new customer first gets to know TG's Child Care, the message they walk away with is this is a truly loving and fun environment where children grow under safe and warm wings to their fullest potential, a place where children and Educators love going to every day (it's like going home!) and where parents can entrust the care of their children and have peace of mind when they go to work.
Embrace social media
In the past you could probably get away with just having a website, and in fact if you actually had one it would seem pretty impressive. Nowadays, that's just not enough. The pandemic has forced businesses into cyberspace, whether you liked it or not. When you can't be there physically to sell, you simply have to get creative and find another way. Those with techno phobia had to switch their mindset and turn techno savvy. Businesses had to establish some sort of digital presence, whether it's revamping their website to keep it relevant to the times, getting on the appropriate social media channels, learning what posts attract and what videos were popular, and being really responsive in the digital space. The upside is, cyberspace opened up the range of customers for businesses from merely local or national to global. The world is your oyster has never been more true.
“Don't use social media to impress people; use it to impact people.” — Dave Willis, Writer & Pastor
Be careful you don't fall into the trap of using social media as a way to blow your own trumpet. It's still not about you! Make sure your content is targeting at your specific customers. It has to be something that they are interested in, not what you think they should know about you.
"85% of consumers say that they will change their buying behaviour in response to social media content." (Source: The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web).
Winning example:
Vermilion Pinstripes has worked for several years with My Blue Tea. From making their website to integrating Facebook Messenger onto their website, the team made it easy for clients to get in touch with the business. By making everything seamless and making engagement easy, the minute a customer surfs their website and likes something, it's just a click away from getting information, or making a purchase. The team also optimised their social media presence via Facebook, Instagram and Google My Business. Because they are a small business, it is imperative they can be easily found (everywhere!). The team set up their online shop so they can service anyone from anywhere. Small businesses can go international too, thanks to digitization.
Tell a good story
Stories are a great way to engage customers, invite them into your world, encourage them to identify with you and what you have to say may resonate with their personal needs and wants also. (Do your research well to understand your target customer profile to know what kind of stories would appeal to them.) It generates an emotional hook and makes your customers get curious about you and want to get to know you better.
When you meet someone new, you're likely to forget their name and profession if that's all you know about them. But if this person shares an anecdote with you that catches your attention, you're more likely to remember their name and a lot more about them. It even makes you hope you can see them again soon. That's the power of stories. For eons it has been used as a way to pass down wisdom and knowledge to the next generation. It is a key aspect in the history of humanity.
“Nothing sticks in your head better than a story. Stories can express the most complicated ideas in the most digestible ways.” — Sam Balter, Sr. Marketing Manager of Podcasts, HubSpot
Vermilion Pinstripes gets to know each client so well they can help each business to create stories that accurately reflects the brand's unique values, voice and identity. No two businesses are alike when Modern Marketing is done well. With Port AdVenture Cruises, their web views jumped 10 fold, all thanks to good SEO management and storytelling. Make yourself memorable. Tell good stories.
Winning example:
Vermilion Pinstripes has been working with Samso to help them create compelling ASX stories. Yes, even in the mining and investment industry, storytelling is key to creating interesting information and making people sit up and notice companies on the ASX. By telling relevant and reliable stories that pique the investors' interests, customers naturally want to follow this brand. Noel Ong, CEO of Samso calls it his Red Seagull strategy, where he creates digestible, manageable bitesized stories that enable companies to show their passion and explain why their projects are worthy of investment and also allow investors to visualise the opportunities offered by these companies and participate in them.
If it's anyone who can make Modern Marketing sound exciting and is passionate about it, it's Vermilion Pinstripes. With proven strategies that work and statistics and data to build confidence in campaigns and strategies, marketing can become something exciting to be involved in, and not something to be dreaded or feared. Check out their list of resources small businesses can use to bring that spark into marketing their businesses.
Contact Vermilion Pinstripes
a/ P.O. Box 9339, Port Macquarie, NSW 2444, Australia
Australia: +6140-777-9828
Singapore: +65-9681-7045
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