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Clarity

Anna Lundberg, Branding & marketing strategy expert

London

Personal branding & content marketing strategy expert. Mentor & advisor to entrepreneurs & startups. Published writer. B2C, FMCG. Service-based businesses.

BRANDING AND DIGITAL MARKETING EXPERTISE:

I built my marketing career at top multi-national Procter & Gamble, gaining experience on all aspects of brand building and marketing from concept and design through to the operational and executional side of the business.

I gradually specialised in digital marketing, becoming an expert in digital strategy and in particular content marketing and social media.

LUXURY AND BEAUTY EXPERIENCE:

I've worked on top luxury and premium fashion and beauty brands including Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Burberry, Hugo Boss, as well as tech brands including Vertu mobile phones (winning the Online Retail Award 2015 for the eCommerce website that I launched).

I now coach and mentor startups and entrepreneurs, helping them on their branding, marketing strategy, website optimisation and social media activities.

PUBLISHED WRITER:

I'm a published writer, with articles appearing on Inc. Magazine, Business Insider, and other online publications, and 500,000+ reads across LinkedIn, Quora and other platforms.

My book, 'Leaving the Corporate 9 to 5: Stories from people who've done it (and how you can too!', is available on Amazon: http://leavingthecorporate9to5.com/

TESTIMONIALS:

"If you need a digital expert, branding expert and a great thought leader then Anna is the person for you."

"Anna combines digital expertise with strong brand-building and marketing skills, as well as solid technical understanding of how to optimize organic search, paid search, and social media investments."

"Anna has really helped me focus – delivering superior marketing campaigns, improving my SEO and helping me target my audience. She’s also very easy to contact, always supportive and very knowledgeable."

$3.33/min

24 Calls

7 Reviews

35 minutes
Avg. call

Entrepreneurship Social Media Marketing Brand Strategy Online Marketing Strategy Marketing Strategy Content Marketing Personal Branding Business Strategy Start-up Consulting Branding & Identity

Call me to talk about

Winning Online With Digital Marketing

Looking to take your digital marketing to the next level? I can help you to engage effectively with your target audience with the right content and on the right platform, following best practices and amplifying your content via paid campaigns. I can also help you with your website, to optimise existing content and navigational structures through to more structural changes where needed, leading to improvements including increased traffic, lower bounce rates, longer (and more effective) time spent on the website, and a more positive user experience. I've advised countless businesses on their content marketing and social media strategies through my corporate digital marketing roles and now as an independent consultant.

Startup Branding, Growth Hacking & Business Plan

Are you a first-time entrepreneur looking for a mentor to guide you through the process of building your business? I can advise you on setting the right objectives, nailing your target audience, creating your brand identity and defining your marketing strategy, all critical elements of a strong business plan. I've started three independent businesses and I'm a mentor for startups via Virgin Startup and Seedcamp accelerator fund.

Personal Branding Support

Are you aiming to establish yourself as an expert, as a speaker or a thought leader in your industry? As an experienced marketer coming from a brand building background and now running three of my own businesses, I can help you to define your personal brand and communicate it effectively online, to help you achieve your career goals and grow your business.

Why not start with my article, 7 First Steps to Establishing Your Personal Brand Online: https://crocuscommunications.com/7-first-steps-establishing-personal-brand-online/

Answers 19
Reviews 7

Answers

Anna Lundberg, Branding & marketing strategy expert answered

Where can I find resources to motivate myself to pursue a new goal now that my previous goal is unattainable?

I understand how disappointing it can be to have had a goal for a long time only to have it quashed.

I wonder, what were your reasons for setting this goal in the first place? How would an MBA support your career goals? What would pursing an MBA give you? Do you have a clear plan for how you would have used the MBA once you’d graduated?

An MBA from a good school undoubtedly has value in the world of business; but ask yourself, is it the degree that you’re after - or the education? The prestige of the degree on your CV is one thing, while the act of learning is another. Are there other ways to achieve these same benefits without the MBA?

You mention working for yourself - is starting your own business an important goal for you? If so, I think most people would agree that an MBA is not the way to go. Can you get more relevant experience elsewhere - working for another startup, for example? Or taking on different roles and projects that will build your skills in important areas such as marketing and sales?

If you believe that an MBA is the right path for you, then I would focus on how you can make this financially viable. If this really is your big dream and you are certain that it is the key to achieving your career goals, then this will give you the motivation to continue working hard to make this dream a reality - even if it means a delay as you work and save up the money to be able to finance your studies.

Setting meaningful goals is key to having the motivation to achieve them.

Get in touch if you’d like to work through what it is you’re really after in terms of career goals and to pull together a plan to help you achieve them!

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Career Advising

Motivation

Therapists

Anna Lundberg, Branding & marketing strategy expert answered

Why is my landing page not converting after a thousand clicks of my FB ad?

Congratulations on getting those clicks to your site. A 3.8% click-through rate (1,074 out of 28,000) is not bad at all!

In terms of improving the conversion on the site itself, there are a couple of areas I would focus on:

(1) First, it’s a question of targeting.

Who are the people you are reaching with your ad (i.e. the targeting that you’ve set up in the Facebook ad manager) and who are the people who are then in fact clicking through to the site (a sub-set of that first group, who are responding to your ad visual and copy)? Clearly it doesn’t matter how many people you bring to the website, if they are the *wrong* people for your product or service then you’re not going to get any conversions.

Who is your ideal customer for the app? Are you clear on the precise demographics, psychographics, geographical location, etc? Can you then get more specific in the settings of the Facebook ad targeting? And what about the image and copy in your ad, are these likely to resonate with that ideal customer?

Note that improving the targeting of the ad and the ad itself will both improve the conversion on your site and the click-through on the ad, giving you a double impact on your results.

(2) Second, you have the landing page itself.

Here you can look at the copy and images again, and evaluate if this is really tapping into a core insight and likely to resonate with the ideal customer who you’ve now attracted to your site. What’s the one key message? Is there an obvious benefit and a clear call to action? Why should anyone sign up on the site, what’s in it for them?

I’d be happy to review the tricks that you’ve already implemented and make further recommendations, just get in touch below for a quick call!

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Facebook Ads

Early Stage Startup

Lean startup

Anna Lundberg, Branding & marketing strategy expert answered

How can I monetize my fashion blog at an early stage?

Fashion blogging, as you’ve already realised, is a hugely competitive business. You need a huge amount of creativity, connections and most of all luck to break through all that clutter and become a star. Of course, you don’t need to become a top-earning celebrity blogger and maybe if you’re just after an additional income stream, then you may be able to carve out a niche for yourself that can earn you that income.

First, your idea. You’re absolutely right to focus on differentiating your blog from existing ones, but it may not be enough to do so just on the medium, i.e. videos vs photos. Who is your audience going to be? What are the key demographics - age, gender, location - and psychographics - insights about their lifestyle and behaviour? What problem are you solving? Why should someone follow you and not someone else? Video may well be an interesting route, but what are you going to do in those videos and why should anyone take the time to watch them?

Then, taking your concerns one by one:

1. Well done for recognising your own weaknesses, it’s great to acknowledge what you know and what you don’t know, so that you can look for help to fill those gaps. If you know that writing isn’t your strongest suit, then of course writing long blog posts is not going to be for you - you either need to outsource this and pay someone to do it before you, or you should focus on your visual strengths i.e. rather creating photos or possibly videos as you suggest. When it comes to online marketing and social media, if you are willing to learn then there is a host of information available free online; and, of course, you have platforms like Clarity where you can have experts supporting you along the way :-)

2. Finding a unique name can be very challenging! The name should reflect your unique selling proposition that I talked about above in terms of your idea: who you’re talking to, what you’re trying to achieve, how you’re different. You may be able to use your own name, if you are happy to build a personal brand around you as an individual, and this will definitely be unique as only you are you! Again, there are plenty of articles giving tips on how to come up with a simple name that is still unique and relevant.

3. The trend in online video is very much going in the direction of being less formal, more ad hoc and spontaneous. People are doing live video streaming on Facebook and Periscope, while the specifications for Instagram videos are also much less demanding than creating a full-scale professional production. If you’re going to be creating daily videos then you’re going to want to keep things as simple for yourself as possible. You can always get more professional lighting and videographers once you’ve established your business and you have a substantial income coming in.

4. In general, in order to monetise your blog you do need to have visitors. Affiliate marketing and advertising will only generate significant income for you if you have sufficient traffic, while many advertisers won’t even be interested in working with you if you can’t demonstrate a substantial following. To build a following as quickly as possible, once you have those fundamentals in place (an understanding of your target audience, a clear brand, and so on), you need to be creating and sharing search-optimised content, you can do advertising e.g. on Facebook or Instagram if you have budget for this, you can guest post on other people’s sites and have them do the same on yours, you might consider a competition e.g. on Instagram to get some buzz around your new channel…

I appreciate that you are impatient to get going but taking some time to get those fundamentals clear in the first place can really save a lot of time and pain further down the road.

Apologies for the long answer but I wanted to address each of your points! Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss any of them in more detail, whether to get clear on your brand fundamentals first of all, to brainstorm a name, or to define the best strategy to build your following in a short space of time. Good luck!

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Fashion

Marketing Strategy

Video Blogging

Anna Lundberg, Branding & marketing strategy expert answered

How can I build a tool to include self-study in people's resumes?

Well done for recognising the importance of self-study, and for having the motivation to pursue it. As someone who loves learning and is eternally curious, personally I’m always reading books and blogs, signing up to courses, meeting with people and doing everything I can to keep learning and keep getting better. I’m constantly engaged in self-study, whether it’s making sure that I stay up to speed in the fast-moving digital marketing industry, studying the process of personal development and how each of us can get better, or learning a new language or even a musical instrument.

This will definitely give you an edge compared to others who don’t share that curiosity and are rather passive when it comes to learning, letting their employers direct their training and not pursuing anything additional on their own initiative.

However, I would actually say that this kind of self-study should be taken for granted. Of course you should stay on top of your field, of course you should take responsibility for your own training and development. I would even argue that this is critical for you to thrive in today’s economy and work environment.

If your self-study includes hard skills, maybe a certification or at least a diploma or certificate, then this becomes easily quantifiable and should absolutely be included on your CV. Often, however, your self-study will have an impact rather on your soft skills, and will show up either in the interview for a new job or in the office once you’re in the the role.

I would ask yourself WHY you're undertaking the self-study in the first place - if it's just for brownie points on your resume, then you may be missing the point.

Give me a call if you’d like to discuss the specifics of your situation!

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New Product Validation

Career Management

Self Starter

Anna Lundberg, Branding & marketing strategy expert answered

How do I find consultants who are busy and need part time assistant-level help?

One good platform for this is LinkedIn. You can search based on people’s job titles and get quite targeted in your approach. I’ve recently had quite a few proposals coming in from personal and virtual assistants, both individuals and companies. I’m not looking for this kind of support at the moment but I will keep their details on file for future reference.

You can also offer your services on freelancer platforms like Upwork, applying to job postings that fit your expertise and the job scope that you’re looking for. There are opportunities here for web development support on projects where they maybe just need an extra pair of hands.

In the meantime, how can you build your confidence so that you can take on bigger projects in the future, if that’s something that you would like to do? Is it a question of filling your skills gaps, getting more projects under your belt, or simply having more time to consolidate your knowledge?

Get in touch if you’d like to discuss the specifics of your skills and experience and how you can best move forward in your career.

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Web development

Consulting

freelancing

Anna Lundberg, Branding & marketing strategy expert answered

I have 2 Facebook ads - same content, different images. How is that one of my ads cost per website click is lower when it gets less clicks?

Hi, there are a few different possibilities I’d look into, based on this limited information:

First, I’d double check that you set up the ad campaign so that you’re paying by CPC (and not CPM), and that you’re looking at website clicks specifically and not clicks overall (the latter includes, likes, comments, etc). Are the ads in the same ad set? Are they running at the exact same time? Against the same target? Facebook ads are priced on a bidding basis, and the number of advertisers you’re competing against may vary.

Second, consider the amount of text on the image: If you have more text on the image, Facebook warns that the cost of your campaign can be higher.

Finally, take a look at your relevance score: This is a score on a scale of 1 to 10 for how relevant Facebook thinks your ad will be to the targeted audience, and your cost will be higher if relevance is lower.

Get in touch if you want to dig into the details of your results together and plan an effective strategy for your next campaign!

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Facebook Ads

Facebook Advertising

Facebook Marketing

Anna Lundberg, Branding & marketing strategy expert answered

What is responsive web design?

If you’ve been following digital marketing, you will have seen that the experts have called out “the year of mobile” pretty much every year for the past 4-5 years. This is an attempt to capture the increased usage of mobile devices to browse and shop online, and the importance of everything from mobile advertising to mobile content and experiences now that mobile traffic accounts for more than half of internet traffic.

At the most basic level, being ready for this new world of mobile means having a website that is optimised for mobile. There have been different ways to do this: you might have a desktop version and a mobile version of your website; you could have a website plus a mobile app; or you might have one single website with a responsive design. I’ve been a fan of responsive web design since 2012 and it’s proven to be a very effective solution.

Responsive web design means that you create one website that adapts to different screen sizes. Effectively, what you are doing is defining rules that change the layout as the screen size changes. If you imagine starting with a website that you’re viewing on a big desktop screen, as you reduce the size of the browser the layout will adapt accordingly. Content that was in a sidebar on the right might move to below the main content; at a certain point, the menu might collapse completely into a drop-down “burger menu”; fonts and buttons might increase in size to make it easier to interact with them on a smaller touch screen. Some designers might even create the website “mobile first”, i.e. start by designing something that is fully optimised for a handheld device and then create rules for larger screen sizes.

Ultimately, it’s about creating the best possible user experience, however they are accessing your site.

Get in touch if you’d like to discuss if this is the right solution for your business!

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Responsive Web Design

Anna Lundberg, Branding & marketing strategy expert answered

What is the best job to get to learn to become an entrepreneur? Working at a VC as an analyst? Work in Sales? Work in Marketing? Consulting?

Each individual will bring something different to a startup team. Often, a founder will have experience in the particular subject matter e.g. nutrition, personal training, adventure, software, real estate, etc but lack broader expertise in sales and marketing or accounting. I recently worked with a startup in which one co-founder used to be a TV director - so he was great at making beautiful video content for the website and for social media - and the other was great at sourcing products from Asia, but neither really knew how to market the business. I myself come from a background in big multi-nationals so I know how to build a brand and how to market a product but I’ve had to adapt to smaller teams and smaller budgets. Consulting is also great for getting exposure to different industries and companies.

Of course the best experience in terms of being an entrepreneur comes from actually launching a business and learning from that experience! Getting a mentor is definitely a great idea, as well as devouring books and relevant courses in the areas in which you know you lack experience.

Good luck!

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Job search

Career Counseling

Career Development

Anna Lundberg, Branding & marketing strategy expert answered

How can I build credibility on a new, unbelievable product that is being introduced to the market for the first time?

Sounds lovely - like the rose in Beauty and the Beast? :-)

I worked for many years in perfume and, as you can imagine, it’s hard to smell a perfume online - something which is arguably critical when buying a new scent. There were a few ways in which we tried to address this, first and foremost by creating a sensorial experience via descriptive copywriting, beautiful images, and increasingly also videos about the ingredients as well as the bottle design and advertising. We did everything we could to tell the story of the product, communicating the concept and the emotion without actually being able to demonstrate the product itself. In addition, we did provide the opportunity to order a free sample so that users could, in fact smell the product where possible.

In your case, I think the storytelling element is critical for your product as well. Explain the science behind it in a simple and easy-to-understand way, describe the process you use to preserve the flowers. You can do this with step-by-step explanations using text and images, and also, as Ryan suggests, using videos. You don’t say if you have an online-only store or if you also have a physical presence - if the latter, you can also have samples for people to look more closely at the product. You might also consider endorsements and testimonials to further build your credibility.

By the way, are you sure that the barrier is believing that the product is real? Have you collected feedback to this effect? Make sure that the other elements of your proposition also make sense, including, importantly, the benefit: what is the point of preserving fresh flowers inside sealed glass? Think of how you’re communicating that benefit, as well, and not just the product itself - e.g. Apple’s “1000 songs in your pocket” for their first iPod, rather than “an MP3 player with 1 GB of data”.

Let me know if you’d like to get into more detail on how you’re marketing your new product, and we can jump on a call to review your proposition.

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Product Marketing

New Business Development

Business Ideas

Anna Lundberg, Branding & marketing strategy expert answered

Do you have some tips for keeping focused as an entrepreneur?

Great question! It's a constant challenge to maintain our focus, especially when we're working in less structured environments as entrepreneurs and freelancers.

In deciding how to prioritise, you first need to decide what is important. This can be at the “big picture” macro level of life - what is your purpose? what are your underlying values? - or simply asking yourself what it is you’re trying to achieve right now with a particular professional or personal project, or on a particular day. Having clear goals will help you to identify what really matters and likewise what are the things that you can either postpone, delegate, or forget about altogether.

It’s extra tempting to procrastinate when you’re feeling overwhelmed as the idea of doing something just seems too big, too difficult. The solution here, I think, is to break it down into tiny chunks. What’s the first step? “Complete project X” is far too general as an item on your to-do list, break i down into things like “Read notes from meeting”, “Schedule a call with this person”, “Google how to do this”, and so on. These little steps become more manageable and much less daunting and then you can work your way through them, one at a time.

Something else you can do is to create structures that can support you as you go, making it easier to stick to your commitments. These might be technical things like blocking time in your calendar, turning off your phone or the Wi-Fi, making sure you take regular breaks; or you might want to work with a person, a friend or business partner who can hold you accountable, or a coach.

Good luck!

PS I’m an entrepreneur with multiple businesses, as well as being a leadership and management trainer and coach.

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Entrepreneurship

Startups

Anna Lundberg, Branding & marketing strategy expert answered

Should I focus my advertising to a "more narrow / highly targeted audience" vs a "more broad / less targeted audience" to increase website sales?

The fact that you CAN ship to anywhere in the world doesn’t mean that you SHOULD; and, even if you do ship worldwide, that doesn’t mean that each and every country will have equal priority. We often want to cater to every consumer in every country because we feel like we have something of value that we want to share with the world and, less altruistically but also important, we want to make more money. This is not an effective strategy, however - in fact, it’s not a strategy at all.

Strategy is all about CHOICES. An effective business strategy will include choices when it comes to things like geographies i.e. which are your priority countries (or more specific e.g. cities or regions), customers (demographics and psychographics), product categories, and channels (online platforms, social networks, offline locations). This will allow you to focus your budget and time where it really matters.

When it comes to website traffic, you want to make sure that (i) it is the right kind of traffic i.e. you are bringing your ideal clients onto the website and (ii) you are converting that traffic once it lands on your site. Having a focused strategy in terms of the people and countries you’re targeting will help you both to run an effective marketing campaign targeting those people and getting them onto the site, and to convert these people into paying customers.

Get in touch if you’d like help with nailing that strategy!

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Online Advertising

Growth Strategies

Marketing Strategy

Reviews

Great information and to the point. Asked great qualifying questions and sought immediate strategies for which to assist w/a product launch.

TD Hicks Source: Clarity

I got a lot from this call. Anna knows how to think about online marketing the right way, asked me the right questions, and helped me clarify where to focus next. She also suggested powerful ideas for me to implement in order to increase engagement and sales.

Giovanni Dienstmann Source: Clarity

Anna really makes a lot of effort to understand your business and specific problems you are trying to solve. Excellent pointers, thank you again!

Julia Teren Source: Clarity

I had an amazing call with Anna. She helped me to get clear on my brand core values, what it stands for and how effectively communicate it to customer. Her advice was extremely helpful for me. Highly recommended!

Iryna Nikolaienko Source: Clarity

excellent insights, thank you!

Julia Teren Source: Clarity

Great call, very helpful.

Shayan Jalali Source: Clarity

Great call! looking forward to taking with Anna again.

ajay khandavalli Source: Clarity

Member since February 2014