September 29th, 2009
Regardless of the economy, not every transaction is right for you. Money is important but sometimes it’s more important to stand your ground and say no.
Your brand is your most important resource. Underselling it sends the wrong message to everyone out there. Remember, people are always looking.
Recently speaking with me at IOWAtasmic, Derek Johnson (CEO of Tatango) spoke about running a landscaping company that ran into this predicament. He ultimately didn’t say no and learned a valuable lesson from it. By cutting his price to do a partial job as a favor for a friend selling a house he misrepresented himself to the public’s perception. People driving by, the neighbors, the new owners, and even his friend’s partner all saw the job done and assumed that was the best work.
Learning the valuable lesson of when to say no has it’s benefits. Your brand image is all you have in the eyes of the public. If all they ever do is view you from afar all they will ever perceive is what they see. Make sure your best foot is always forward when representing yourself and your brand.
Tags: advice, benefit, brand, brand image, branding, business, communicating, communications, consumer, core values, economy, interaction, interactions, iowatasmic, job, knowledge, life, marketing, money, perception, predicament, productivity, selling
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September 20th, 2009
While it may be your brand you do not actually own it. Your public owns it. Your customers decide what your brand means to them. Once you put your company out there it is now in the hands of the public.
The fact that your audience has final say in whether your product thrives or dies doesn’t change the fact that you still have the last say in the decisions implemented. If a majority of people purchasing your product decide decide they don’t like something either you must change it, change their opinion or become a victim of change.
Changing your brand based on feedback alone is shortsighted. Although there is wisdom in the crowd you ultimately are the professional. Your years of experience coupled with thorough knowledge of the category definitely weights your opinion. Just remember, you don’t pay your bills; they do.
So what do you do?
• Survey your customers with key questions
• List all potential pros and cons at hand
• Compare with competitors and other businesses who may have had the same issue
• Create a mindmap of your business / product / situation landscape
• Map out the best possibility to completion
• Implement your plan in timely phases
• Gauge for feedback
• Adjust accordingly
Not all situations are created equal and neither are your customers. By being aware of your capabilities, your customer’s savviness and the clarity of mind to know the difference between the two, you should be positioned to dominate in any situation you encounter.
Tags: advice, attributes, audience, benefit, brand, branding, business, business product, capabilities, clarity of mind, communicating, communication, communications, consumer, consumers, conversation, core values, corporate message, cradle to grave, cross country race, crowd, customer relationships, decisions, endurance, feelings, foster innovation, gauge, goals, interaction, interactions, landscape, life, lifeblood, lists, long term relationship, map, marketing, mindmap, network, networking, passion, person smile, productivity, pros and cons, purchase decisions, retention rate, savviness, selling, social, sprint, term rewards, Value, wisdom
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September 19th, 2009
Social media isn’t just one thing to everyone- it’s everything to everyone. Social media is marketing, PR, advertising, customer relations, branding, influence building and most of all, social. To focus only one area for your brand is extremely short-sighted yet ultimately it may be your best move.
Admittedly as a brand you should be proficient and well represented in all of these aspects of social media. That IS what should be happening but let’s face it- most brands are really great at one thing & need help at all the rest. So what does one do?
You could do a couple of things:
• Be a Jack of all trades, master of none by continuing to spread your valuable resources and energy over many areas.
• Hire a competent professional (employee or agency) to head up the areas that your brand isn’t so savvy in.
• Focus on the area your brand is amazing in and just kill it. Be the number one at what you and over time your other areas will pick up because of how great you are in that niche.
The first solution is never the answer because all of the areas suffer when you just half-ass it. The area that your brand naturally shines in is losing out because you have to take away from it to give to the others. You can only split up 100% so many ways.
Tags: advice, attributes, benefit, brand, branding, business, communicating, communication, communications, consumer, consumers, conversation, core values, corporate message, cradle to grave, cross country race, customer relations, customer relationships, endurance, feelings, first solution, foster innovation, goals, interaction, interactions, jack of all trades, jack of all trades master of none, life, lifeblood, lists, long term relationship, marketing, network, networking, niche, passion, person smile, productivity, professional employee, purchase decisions, retention rate, selling, social, sprint, term rewards, valuable resources, Value, wisdom
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September 18th, 2009
I know we’d all like to think our brands are original, given to us by divine inspiration – but they’re not. Regardless if youre just starting out or have been in business for many years, we all are influenced on a day to day basis.
All of your past experiences, biases, likes, dislikes and predispositions all affect your decision making process. You also must account for anyone else who influences the brand. This includes key internal players in messaging, imaging and managing among others as well as external influencers of customers, competitors and partners. Add all of this to the influence of pop culture and media consumed and you have a tremendous amount of influence.
With all the forces vying for dominancy what can you do?
• HUMANIZE: Start thinking about your brand as a human. Each and every human has a personality with likes and dislikes.
• PERSONIFY: Create categories where you can list your brand’s preferences in music, art, literature, movies etc. The sky’s the limit here.
• SPECIFY: Give your brand specific attributes. If it were a human what would it’s demographics be? Gender, age, race, income etc
• ANALYZE: Analyze all of these attributes and figure out what feeling your brand conveys. Is your brand a posh upper east sider that comes from money and summers in the Hamptons?
• ATTRIBUTE: Based on your brand personality analysis what clothes should your brand wear aka what are it’s coloring, styling & imaging attributes.
• SYNC: How do others regard your brand? How do you want your brand to be received? Now that you know how your brand looks & who your brand is you need to make sure that the words coming out of your brand’s mouth syncs up with your image.
We as humans are always changing. New influences come into out lives daily and must be acted upon. Your brand functions in the same way. It’ll always be the same “person” at the core but it must be flexible adaptable and aware of decisions to change on a concious level. Remember, you are what you “eat”.
Tags: advice, attributes, benefit, biases, brand, brand personality, branding, business, communicating, communication, communications, consumer, consumers, conversation, core values, corporate message, cradle to grave, cross country race, customer relationships, decision making process, decisions, demographics, divine inspiration, endurance, experiences, feelings, foster innovation, gender age, goals, influencers, interaction, interactions, life, lifeblood, lists, long term relationship, marketing, network, networking, passion, person smile, personality analysis, pop culture, productivity, purchase decisions, retention rate, selling, social, sprint, sync, term rewards, Value, wisdom
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September 17th, 2009
Go look at something. What’s your first impression? That’s what counts. When people say first impressions are the most important this needs to be paid attention to, especially for your brand.
Your potential customer takes in everything about your brand at the point of contact. Your colors, fonts, wording and text shapes, and graphics all affect their purchase decision. What message is your brand conciously and subconsciously conveying?
Is your target market accurately receiving your message visually? What is the feeling your are looking to convey? Designing a brand that communicates your message effectively is so much more than colors text and image.
The most powerful brands know how to strike a balance between all of these elements. Any designer worth their salt knows that there’s a limit to the amount of colors, fonts, graphics and the scale and placement of all of these elements. The Golden Ratio is a good guideline to test this crucial balance.
People are generally intuitive. If you want to know how it feels to your custom er put yourself in their shoes. Envision yourself AS them, down to the precise specifics of their demographics. Are you a stay at home mom with 3 young kids concerned with family values and on a budget? Well now you are.
Separate your head from your heart then bring them back together. How does your brand feel to you? Now how does it seem to you logically? This is exactly what your potential customer is going through.
Take the time to account for your brand’s intangible qualities and you’ll see tangible reults in your bottom line.
Tags: advice, attributes, benefit, bottom line, brand, brand messages, branding, business, communicating, communication, communications, conciously, consumer, consumers, conversation, core values, corporate message, cradle to grave, cross country race, customer relationships, demographics, endurance, family values, feelings, first impression, first impressions, foster innovation, goals, golden ratio, intangible qualities, interaction, interactions, life, lifeblood, lists, long term relationship, marketing, network, networking, passion, person smile, point of contact, productivity, purchase decision, purchase decisions, retention rate, selling, social, specifics, sprint, target market, term rewards, Value, wisdom
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September 15th, 2009
Passion and romance do NOT make a relationship. They’re not sustainable in the long run. Ask anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship. They are key attributes but not essential. This goes for brand-customer relationships especially.
What’s mutually sustainable over time is love, respect, common interests and the ability to make the other person smile. Passion and romance are a sprint. Love and the above mentioned attributes are a cross country race. A burst of passion is needed every now and then to invigorate the relationship but what is truly needed in the long run is endurance.
A brand’s ultimate goal is to have a customer from cradle to grave. This also plays true for the customer. A customer doesn’t want to have to change brands often. The less thinking a customer has to do about their purchase decisions the better.
People are bombarded with tons of decisions they have to make every day. Make their lives simpler and they’ll thank you for it by purchasing often. Some things you can do to make their decision easier:
- Keep a consistent brand imaging and messaging on all fronts
- Give a personality and life to your brand. Make them smile in your own way
- Be honest and open with all communications
- Encourage discussion especially feedback. Your customers are your lifeblood. You should know if they’re unhappy even before they’re dissatisfied. Got that?
- Make interacting fun and interesting. There’s nothing worse than having the same corporate message drilled into your head over & over again.
- Foster innovation internally and externally. Some of the best ideas come from customers and workers from different departments. Remember the wisdom of the crowd.
- Reward for short and long term. By giving people short term rewards you satisfy their need for the now. Giving them long term rewards allows them to strive for something greater thus having a better retention rate all around.
Remember, you’re in this relationship for the long haul. Your customer is that hot blonde at the bar that everyone is eyeing and making moves on. Why should she stay with you? Give your customer enough of an incentive not to go anywhere and you’ll be the one reaping the rewards.
Tags: advice, attributes, benefit, brand, branding, burst, business, common interests, communicating, communication, communications, consumer, consumers, conversation, core values, corporate message, cradle to grave, cross country race, customer relationships, endurance, feelings, foster innovation, goals, interaction, interactions, life, lifeblood, lists, long term relationship, marketing, network, networking, passion, person smile, productivity, purchase decisions, retention rate, selling, social, sprint, term rewards, Value, wisdom
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September 14th, 2009
Know that old truism 80% of your business is from 20% of your clients? Well the same goes for word of mouth. Numbers are all well and good for surface value but in actuality a small group of your customers are fueling your business.
This small group of people are your brand evanglists or ebrandgelists. These are the people that are rabidly consuming your product or service. These are the people that are publicly and passionately promoting you. These are the people who are your online an offline digital soldiers. They make your brand viral in a way that counts: amongst their trusted circle, their friends.
What are you doing to cultivate this group? Are you rewarding their behavior? Are you encouraging them to ebrandgelize you more? Do you have a special incubator to allow these ebrandgelists to connect with others like them?
Whenever you encourage ebrandgelists to interact with others like them this allows enthusiasts to solidify their beliefs and actions through other enthusiasts. Setting up a system of rewards and encouragement creates an environment where people feel cared about by your brand. This ultimately drives them to utilize your product or service more as well as tell others about their wonderful experience.
People LOVE to be passionate about things. Give them a reason to be passionate time and time again. Being passionate about something makes them feel good. Feeling good allows them to connect with others in similar situations. People look to connect with like minds because humans are intrinsically social creatures.
Large numbers are important because it sends a message of prosperity to the masses. The numbers you need to focus on are the group of people most passionate about your brand. Passion is infectious. Give your ebrandgelists a reason to spread it
Tags: actuality, advice, benefit, brand, branding, business, communicating, communication, communications, consumer, consumers, conversation, core values, digital soldiers, ebrandgelist, encouragement, enthusiasts, evangelist, evangelists, feeling good, incubator, interaction, interactions, large numbers, network, networking, passion, passionate, prosperity, rewards, selling, small group, social, social creatures, surface value, truism, Value, word of mouth
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September 13th, 2009
A great successful brand has a plan for various uses of their identity. No possibility is too small or too out there to be considered. Implementation of branding at every level is key to closing the sale when you can’t be there for the hard sale. The sale is in the details and if you’re not there too then you’re losing out.
In today’s increasingly cluttered landscape consumers are vigilantly filtering out their attention. In order to grab a hold of their subconscious and conciousness minds your brand needs to be subtly placed. All the better if you do it a self-referential ironic or unforeseen way. Bonus points for collaboration.
I’m on the train. I’m listening to music. I’m reading a book. I’m playing with my multimedia phone. I’m writing something. I’m doing ALL of this at once. I’m doing all this to block out outside influences on my way to wherever I’m going in my one last area of zen in the outside world. Your advertising and constant bombardment has forced me to put up my defenses. So how do you as a successful brand break through that barrier?
Any type of countermeasure must be done with the most delicate of hands. I’m already guarding against the big in-your-face branded gestures. By the time a sneak attack is realized it’s already too late. My defenses are down and I’m thinking about your brand in a different light.
By taking the time to invest in the details I realize that you’ve taken the time and money to invest in me. As a savvy consumer I know that every little bit of branding costs money. I appreciate it especially when you do so with a fine brush rather than a spraygun.
Even when I’m not conscious of these small details, on some level I’m registering it. That’s the most important part of this whole journey- the soft sell, the long tail, buying a customer’s mindshare. If your brand is interesting enough in a way that I can’t get you out of my head long after your ingenious piece of branding is gone then ultimately you’ve won.
It could be something as simple as having your brand colors be represented on something as trivial as a straw. Regardless of what it is for you just realize that there IS something there for you. If you don’t do it be sure that someone will do it and is probably already doing it.
Tags: advertisers, advice, benefit, bombardment, bonus points, collaboration, communicating, communication, communications, consumers, core values, costs money, different light, feelings, gestures, goals, ingenious piece, interaction, interactions, journey, knowledge, landscape, life, little bit, mindshare, network, networked, networking, personalities, personality, productivity, savvy consumer, sneak attack, social, taking the time, time and money, Value, zen
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September 12th, 2009
You are not Chris Brogan, Brian Solis or Gary Vaynerchuk. You’re not Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki or even Robert Kiosaki. And neither am I. You’re you and I’m me. You’re not a rockstar. The moment you come to terms with that then you can truly live and love your life.
All of these men mentioned above aren’t overnight successes and don’t just glide along in life. They have been plugging away day in and day out at their claim to fame for years. Practice does indeed make perfect.
These are ordinary men who have achieved success by having passion about something they believe in on a consistent basis. Keywords – passion, believe, consistent. There’s a lesson here in which they are to be admired but by no means deified. Take a page from their books, literally – all of these men are published authors as well.
To paraphrase Gary Vaynerchuck, if everyone would stop consuming so much media and produce more content then we’d all be that much richer. Stop being so concerned with what certain rockstars are doing and be more concerned with what you’re doing.
Find out what you do well and do it, a lot. This may sound simple enough but in today’s media saturated society we increasingly have fragmented attention spans. Cut everything else except one or two things that you love and excel at. Now become legendary in your niche.
As Einstein once said ‘Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration‘. If you’re any sort of inspired genius you’ll learn to perspire and love it, then your fans will love you for the rockstar that you truly are.
Tags: advice, benefit, brian solis, chris brogan, claim to fame, communicating, communication, communications, consistent basis, core values, einstein, feelings, gary vaynerchuck, genius is 1 inspiration and 99 perspiration, goals, guy kawasaki, inspiration, interaction, interactions, knowledge, life, network, networked, networking, niche, ordinary men, overnight successes, paraphrase, passion, personalities, personality, productivity, robert kiosaki, rockstar, rockstars, s media, Seth Godin, social, Value
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August 14th, 2009
Frustrations have arisen as of late- yet again- with some notable bloggers on Twitter with autoDMs. I used to autoDM that I autofollowed them but since Twitter exploded with spammers I had to stop that. In a compromised network it’s not about the tactics they use but who you allow in your personal network.
The private Direct Message (or DM) is an extremely valuable tool for having timely sensitive conversations without exchanging emails. The conversation ecosystem breaks down when you allow anyone at all to connect with you. Allowing someone into your life is a privilege that shouldn’t be given out lightly.
Selective selection
My good friend & guest blogger Anaiis Flox once said to me that she’d rather give the keys to her house to someone than give them her website password. In an online world of ambient intimacy and unabashed public living in social media, your network reflects your value & worth. In other words, you are who you tweet.
There’s an old saying that goes, show me your closest 4 friends and I can tell you all about yourself. Of course I’m paraphrasing but the sentiment is still the same. Your personal brand is comprised of how you look, what you say, how you hold yourself, what you do and who you choose to associate with.
Connecting to everyone
Connecting with anyone online regardless of who they are is the offline equivalent to talking to anyone and everyone that comes into your view. With billions of people in this world (many unsavory) we can’t possibly speak to everyone we encounter everywhere. This is why we set up guidelines to who and in what capacity we’ll engage someone. Online is no different.
Today even spammers, multi-level marketers (MLM) and robots have accounts that have tens of thousands of followers. This is due to autofollowing and pump & dump tactics. You may have quantity but do you have quality? Numbers play a factor in how many people you are able to reach but they are not the only factor nor are they the most important factor to your intrinsic value.
Auto-caring
If you’ve connected with thousands upon thousands of people who all want to broadcast to you then who’s really listening to your message? Casting a wide net will net you some fish but are they the right type of fish or even up to your standards?
In Twitter you have no one to blame but yourself for the autoDM. I admit some spammy people get through every now and then on my account but when they do I immediately unfollow them. I’m not so concerned about autoDMs as I am about mentionspam. While I choose who to allow to private message me I have no control over who mentions my @ name.
Mention Spam
For more prominent higher-profile twitterers this can potentially be a huge problem. The more valuable you are to larger amounts of people that follow you the more likely they are to talk to you. Raise your profile and value enough then you are more likely to attract spammers who openly broadcast to you by attaching your Twitter name to their spammy message. A messy situation indeed.
What can you do to combat the spam?
Be selective about who you connect with. Remember it’s the depth of each relationship that will raise your value much farther than the breadth of your entire network alone.
Be proactive when curating your community. If someone is spamming your public stream then do something about it. Block them, let @spam know & ask your network to do the same.
Your network is only as good as you allow it to be. If someone is going against general accepted standards of the network you’ve curated then let them know. Be a part of the solution not the problem.
Tags: autoDM, autofollow, billions, bloggers, communicating, communication, communications, conversation, core values, Direct Message, DM, ecosystem, follower, followers, following, frustrations, good friend, interactions, intimacy, marketing, mlm, networking, personal brand, personal network, privilege, robots, selling, sensitive conversations, sentiment, social media, spam, twitter, valuable tool, Value, website password
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