It’s the words and the language and the tone of voice and the brand personality that comes alive through the content.
Boyd Roberts is the Director of Big Picture Group, which consists of two brands—Bellman Branding Agency and Emote Digital Agency—which work together to help deliver the big picture for your business. Bellman specializes in branding, graphic design and content while the award-winning Emote represents all things digital including website design and development, and website maintenance services.
In this episode of Velocitize Talks, Roberts shares his thoughts on website design, digital rebranding, and WordPress.
Two Agencies in One
We’re able to really help clients with a whole range of things, all the way through their branding journey and then through their digital journey as well.
Both of the Big Picture Group brands position themselves to deliver branding and design, through Bellman, and a digital-first approach, through Emote, giving the group more opportunities to invest in cross-selling options. In other words, clients interested in branding will invariably need digital services as well.
“There’s no decision around a new site or working on the existing site until we understand what the client’s goals are and what their pain points are, and why they’re even speaking to us in the first place,” Roberts says.
Many Happy Returns
Given the softness in the landscape at the moment, clients are very much focused on ROI.
Due to the ever-evolving digital economy, Roberts says that most requests they’re seeing from clients involve maximizing ROI from existing marketing initiatives and websites as opposed to creating something totally new. These initiatives could include improving content and enhancing brand properties.
“What we’re seeing is a huge interest in people wanting to get more ROI out of their existing web presence so that’s been a big growth area as opposed to new build requests,” Roberts says.
Effective digital rebranding and website redesign may involve rethinking brand assets, content, values and the overall customer experience. The role of Emote specifically is to deliver the best ROI while increasing the conversion rate, even when they’re not involved in the original design or development process.
Roberts believes that websites will always play a critical role in marketing, and expects that a brand’s other channels will be able to use the existing website infrastructure and content.
“Our biggest growth area at the moment has been in helping clients get more out of their current tech stack ecosystem just because it’s lower cost,” Roberts says.
Rebranding & Expanding
The brand personality comes alive with content.
Content services, from messaging to visuals, continues to be one of Big Picture’s fastest growing areas. Knowing your audience and understanding their needs through the right creative outputs has always been important. But for Big Picture, incorporating insights and strategy is where the magic begins. The results reveal themselves after implementing this work across channels and brand applications.
“Content has long been something that hasn’t been as valued as design,” Roberts says.
Big Picture worked with Bakers Delight, a bakery serving Australia and New Zealand, to create digital campaigns to expand and refine its brand while attracting new franchise owners. Since then, they have handled their entire digital transformation, helping them to become an e-commerce business and strengthening their social media presence.
Another example of smart brand strategy involved Brown Brothers Wine, a family-owned wine company for 130 years. The company carried a wide range of wine brands; however, each brand was housed in a different environment with separately managed inventory. After developing the corporate website, Big Picture Group designed and created a child site initially for one brand, and then rolled out individual sites for the rest of the brands. This allowed them to manage all of their online sales through one environment.
“It meant that the client didn’t have to pay for new sites for each brand,” says Roberts.
Suzuki & Woo
WordPress and WooCommerce are simply in another league.
Big Picture Group managed Suzuki’s entire digital transformation in order to deliver the best motorcycle website in Australia for this legendary brand, and redefine how motorcycles are sold. This meant providing customers with a visually stunning and transparent experience, while arming them with the necessary information before making a purchase.
In Roberts’s experience, their clients love the customization, flexibility and scalability provided by WordPress and WooCommerce, especially within the B2B space. This is where other open source platforms like Shopify tend to fall short.
The transformation included a customization tool called “Build Your Bike,” where customers could select motorcycle models and colors along with available accessories and service plans. Emote helped Suzuki roll out 100 dealer sites for their dealers to use their own custom e-commerce front ends over WooCommerce.
“When it comes to B2B, WordPress WooCommerce is amazing,” says Roberts. “You can literally customize and scale and deliver whatever the client wants.”
To learn more about Big Picture Group, visit their website and follow them on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. To keep up with Boyd Roberts, follow him on LinkedIn.