The Step Change Blog

The latest thinking on business, strategy, marketing and sales

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Recent Posts

September 4, 2018

What Is Brand Positioning?

Branding, Marketing Strategy

Are you proactively influencing how your target audience sees your brand in relation to all the other options available to them (a.k.a your competitors)? 

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August 30, 2018

How a New FMCG Brand Became the 8th Highest-Selling SKU in Coles in Just 6 Months [Brand Strategy Case Study]

Step Change

From a no-name free-range egg brand, Happy Chicken Eggs is now the eighth highest-selling SKU in Coles — in less than six months after it was launched.

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August 23, 2018

7 Lead Nurturing Best Practices to Boost Your Conversions

Marketing Strategy, Digital

So you already have a killer inbound marketing strategy. You may find yourself wondering  why you’re still having trouble getting your qualified leads down the pipeline. Why aren’t they converting?

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August 15, 2018

How to Build a User-Centric Information Architecture

Digital

Have you ever landed on a website to look into some content only to be confused by the plethora of information on the homepage? Sure enough, that website likely has a problem with its information architecture.

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August 8, 2018

The 10 Commandments of SEO: Best Practices to Increase Your Search Traffic

Every business today needs a good SEO strategy to differentiate themselves from everyone else. Those who manage to rank in top search results get up to 33% more clicks.

But even when you have done everything you could to boost your SEO efforts by creating great content or optimising your website to showcase who you are and what you’re offering, it’s easy to get lost in the fold with over 1.3 billion websites in existence as of January 2018. That’s a whole lot of content and links to sort out.

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August 2, 2018

Kevin Roberts’s Lessons on Failing Fast

Culture & Leadership

Running a business or managing a team is no walk in the park. Along the way, we realise that failure is unavoidable and sometimes even necessary. In this fourth video of a five-part interview series, we asked former Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts on what we can learn from failure and how to make the most of it.

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August 1, 2018

The Psychology of Content Funnels: Psychological Hacks to Take Clients from Awareness to Action

Digital, Content Marketing

If I told you there was a way to earn three times as many leads without spending any more money on marketing, would you believe me? Because that’s exactly what happens when you switch from the traditional outbound marketing to content marketing.

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July 12, 2018

The Ultimate Guide to Creating Actionable Buyer Personas

Marketing Strategy, Digital

Buyer personas. Either you have them but your team doesn’t know how to use them, so they’re good as gone — or your team simply skipped creating one to get to the ‘real work’.

While many companies are aware of the general importance of personas, they don’t fully understand what it is they’re trying to do when they create them.

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July 10, 2018

Agency News: A Step Change towards Growth

Step Change

Big announcements from the agency on our roadmap to growth, plus a look at the Step Change culture — all in this week’s Step Change News.

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July 5, 2018

How to Build Your Marketing Plan for FY19: Marketing 2.0 Breakfast Session

Business Strategy, Step Change, Marketing Strategy

Today’s customers and prospects know exactly what they want and go online to find it. To market your business in this new age, you need more than just the right message to stand out and drive customer loyalty. You need to do more than just create the right offer.

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July 3, 2018

How to Successfully Launch a Product Online [with Case Studies]

Marketing Strategy, Digital, Business Growth

Even Amazon‘s $685 billion market value couldn‘t save the Amazon Fire. Launching a product online takes a lot of work — and it‘s something that can elude even the largest companies in the world.

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June 21, 2018

What Is Digital Transformation?

Digital

Digital transformation — you may have heard this term in a recent digital conference you’ve attended, or you may be even assigned to lead one. And you’re not the only one, because right now, it is a big focus in growing organisations.

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June 19, 2018

How to Achieve Peak Performance at Work

Culture & Leadership, Business Growth

Many agencies who are at their optimal performance are striving to achieve peak performance thinking that is what is needed to win.

So we asked former Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts how to maintain peak performance in your team and as an individual. In this video, he also shares how he has been able to put this into action to get to where he is now.

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May 22, 2018

Customer Engagement: How Would These Strategists Win More Customers?

Customer Journey, Business Strategy, History's Greatest Strategists, Customer Centricity

If great strategic thinkers like Anita Roddick, Jean Nidetch, and Mother Teresa would run your business, how would they transform your customers into raving fans?

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May 10, 2018

Blog SEO Checklist: How to Make Your Content Rank in Google

Digital, Content Marketing

A blog is a powerful tool every business should have. If you want to stay relevant and competitive, if you want to be found online, a business blog is a necessity. It’s simply the most effective tactic that allows you to attract, engage, and nurture leads as they go through the stages in your marketing funnel.

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May 9, 2018

Brand Strategy: Everything You Need to Know

Branding

It was Steve Forbes who famously said, “Your brand is the single most important investment in your business.” But some, if not most, businesses tend to misunderstand this. Here’s why.

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May 3, 2018

Why You Need to Identify Your Customer’s Pain Points: Insights from Kevin Roberts

Step Change, Marketing Strategy, Customer Centricity

In the second part of this series, Insights from Kevin Roberts, we ask the former CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi what goes on in his head when he talks to clients.

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May 1, 2018

What Makes a Great Marketing Strategy?

Marketing Strategy

Look into any business and marketing is usually the first budget to be ignored — or cut out entirely. 

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April 5, 2018

The Content Marketing Funnel Playbook: A Systematic Approach to Promoting Your Brand

Digital, Content Marketing

Marketers are facing a dilemma today. On one hand, it’s becoming clear that creating content is not only an effective way to raise publicity for their companies, but it’s also essential to do so. On the other hand, so many companies are using content that consumers have become overexposed to.

The typical consumer sees hundreds of articles, blog posts, videos, and other forms of content per day and only manage to fully consume or remember a small fraction of them.

Unless your content marketing strategy can stand out from the rest, there’s no way to convert viewers and readers to consumers.

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April 4, 2018

How To Create A Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Business Strategy, History's Greatest Strategists

Sustainable competitive advantages are becoming harder to find and harder to maintain. There are really only 2 ways that you can define these. What are they?

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April 3, 2018

6 Books about Behavioural Economics CMOs Should Read

Invisible Marketing, invisible communications

The best marketers know when to make and not to make decisions. This is why understanding Behavioural Economics as a science of decision-making and looking into the human behaviour is a must for CMOs. Here are 6 Step Change-recommended books on Behavioural Economics that CMOs should be reading.

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March 29, 2018

Digital Marketing KPIs You Should be Tracking

Digital

Throughout the Director’s Guide to Digital series, we’ve established the need for digital to be fully integrated into your marketing strategy. Still, you can’t add any real value to your digital marketing efforts until you can measure performance and track how digital has added to the success of your overall strategy.

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March 20, 2018

Insights from Kevin Roberts: Creativity and Innovation

Step Change, Creativity

Former Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts sheds light on essential matters like organisational growth, change, and creativity in this one-of-a-kind interview with Head of Strategy, Glenn Bartlett. This is the first post of the five-part video series. 

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February 22, 2018

Where Do CEOs Plan to Invest for Growth in 2018?

Business Strategy, Digital, Business Growth

We recently surveyed 133 CEOs, Directors of Marketing and Sales, and CMOs to find out where companies are likely to invest for growth. 

We found that most young executives are aiming to increase investment across the board more than older executives. We also found it interesting that smaller cities like Adelaide are more adventurous in terms of virtual reality or augmented reality than Sydney or Melbourne.

The highlight of our survey reveals the key areas where business leaders plan to invest to grow their businesses this year.

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February 16, 2018

What Makes a Great Digital Marketing Campaign?

Digital

In an ever-changing and highly competitive digital environment, not having a solid digital marketing campaign is a lost opportunity to attract new leads, engage your audience, and drive them through the funnel for actual conversion.

Still, so many businesses out there do not have a digital marketing strategy or know how to run an effective marketing campaign online. 

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February 15, 2018

Why CFOs Play a Critical Role in Strategic Decision-Making

Business Strategy

The Chief Financial Officer is a key player in any organisation and is someone you need to successfully engage with if you want to create positive change in an organisation. A CFO can be your biggest ally — or your greatest nemesis.

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February 8, 2018

Step Change News: Movie Night Success | Powerful Presence Leadership Course

Step Change, Powerful Presence

With our popcorn boxes ready and our digital thinking caps on, we stepped into The Dendy for Step Change Movie Night last week. We welcomed more than 200 clients and friends — our biggest audience ever.

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February 1, 2018

The Hierarchy of Content Engagement

Digital

With today’s digital space overloaded with so much content, cutting through the noise is only half the battle won.

You need to get your audience to complete the content engagement hierarchy to drive actual conversion.

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January 25, 2018

Transform Your UX Design through a Customer-Centric Strategy

UX, Digital, Customer Centricity

We have recently seen an interplay between design and business strategy in the digital landscape. With key players setting the pace for how we can tailor design towards the user experience, we then ask, does it really make a difference?

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January 19, 2018

5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Miss Out on the Practice of Powerful Presence

Powerful Presence, Culture & Leadership

The Practice of Powerful Presence is a series of concepts and exercises that let you consistently bring out the best in you so you can be the best leader for others.

The next Powerful Presence is in Adelaide on 24th - 26th August. Register Here. 

This is not another leadership tool or app you can simply download — it’s the complete operating system you need if you want to think clearly, think creatively, be powerfully present, and have an edge in your communications.

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