What often happens is the longer you are in your position, the longer your business has been around, and certainly the larger your business is; the more likely it is that you’ve distanced yourself from that level of inspiration. You’ve distanced yourself from that moment where you knew, without a shadow of a doubt, why you were getting up and why you were working so hard to create this wonderful business. That’s a true shame, but it happens to every single business out there. The only way to solve that problem is to get exceptionally good at sharing your brand, because here’s the secret.

Branding = Inspiration.

When you brand your company, when you do it right, you’re digging down deep into that level of inspiration that transforms, both your outlook for your business and your customers’ outlook on your business. When those two things happen, you get a hall of mirrors effect; that reflects one against the other against the other, and it serves to inspire you. It ignites the passion in your stakeholders, and it allows your customers to love the business that you’ve created. When your customers love your business, you have every opportunity to sell them all of the goods and services that they need, and you have the ability to earn that living you’ve striven for. Most importantly you’re able to get up every morning with that passion in your belly, and that desire to serve, and that inspired belief that you truly are making a profound difference in the world.

Branding can give you all of that. If you haven’t spent the time and the energy that it takes to create a well-rounded brand for your business, you’re missing out. I can’t urge you enough to just take a few minutes out of your day, and to think about what it is that makes your business unique. What is that intersection of ideas that creates a business that is yours and yours alone? When you know that, you’ll unlock the secret to your brand and to inspiring yourself, your employees, and all of your stakeholders to achieve higher results every single day.

What seems to happen is that people try to compare their new brand and logo to an existing one — and usually, one that has already invested hundreds of millions of dollars and many years in creating their brand and product. They choose brands like Coke or Nike and try to compare their logo or brand position to one. Understandably, the new brand comes up short, every time.

The thing that everyone stuck at that crossroads needs to remember is that there is a profound difference between a new brand and a well-established one. And trying to compare the two is impossible. At its core, a logo is just an image created through graphic design. It’s an image that the new company will imbue with meaning over time. The new logo does not mean anything really at the outset to their ideal audience. It may have a meaning for the decision makers – but it won’t be obvious or well-known until AFTER they take the time, energy and effort to share their brand with the world.

There is no Eureka moment when you choose your brand

It might even surprise you to learn that at the outset, Phil Knight, Chairman of the Board of Directors (and co-founder) of Nike didn’t like his logo. Take a look at the video below from CBS Sunday Morning.

The thing that makes Nike so successful is Phil Knight’s (and the management team’s) willingness to say (and believe) “OK, that’s the best we can do. Let’s go.” That decision, the one where you choose your brand is actually where the magic happens. Branding occurs in the act of making the decision — not necessarily choosing the best piece of art.

Now that’s not to say that any graphic design can be a great logo. Just like everything else, there are different levels of possibility for a logo. Some are timeless and go the distance. Some are, frankly, terrible. But if you’re looking at a logo that is truly the “best we can do,” then choose your brand and “go.”

Don’t Wait, Don’t Dither: Choose Your Brand

If you are tied up in knots trying to create your brand – look at the options, if they aren’t universally terrible, choose one. Say “OK, that’s the best we can do. Let’s go.” and move on. If you’re managing your marketing and advertising appropriately, branding consistently, your brand and logo will do what they need to do.

It will be no surprise to you if you’ve been following the blog that the answer (in my opinion) is a resounding, “YES, Brands Matter!” Let me explain why.

The Reasons Brands Matter

1. Whether you’re advertising, marketing, or hiding out in a hole — your company is being recognized. Your customers (and potential customers) are actively attributing feelings, opinions, and categories to your business. This attribution IS A BRAND. It may not be a great brand, it may not be a strong brand, it might be inconsistent, and it might be negative (or positive), but it IS a brand.
2. People do business with companies they like. And they like companies that are consistent and upon which they can rely. Think about it. When you know what to expect from a person (or business), you are more likely to “like” them. But if you don’t know if you’re going to get Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde on any given day — you’re less likely to want to spend time in their company. And you’re much less likely to buy from them repeatedly. Being consistent with your messaging helps your customers and potential customers to know what to expect and to like you more.
3. When you brand a business, you’re essentially creating consistency in your outward messaging for your customers. This consistency gives you a 1 + 1 = 10 effect when it comes to your advertising because you no longer have dissonated messages out there in the marketplace. When every message you send is congruent with every other message you send to customers, they remember it — know where to file you as a business, and will more rapidly adopt your company into their usual shopping habits.

At the end of the day, all the advertising you are doing is creating a Brand. So if your social media, Black Friday ads, general advertising, customer experience, and all the other outward-facing elements of your business are not telling the same story — you’re missing out — you’re building a brand, but it’s not one many people will want to embrace.

It’s like a TV pilot that’s strange. They rarely work out. But well-crafted TV pilots have the opportunity to become long-running series.

With a well-crafted brand, you business can also reap the benefits and become top of mind for your customers.

So YES, brands do matter. What are you doing to build yours?

In that moment is pure passion that (should) be the basis of the brand. All the branding that comes after that should reflect that unique moment.

The funny thing is, that moment is also the one thing that most entrepreneurs are most likely NEVER to discuss. And for businesses that have been around for many years that moment of lightning might be irrevocably lost. But it’s worth recreating. There is always enough institutional knowledge (no matter how long ago the founding occurred) to build a brand from this simple beginning.

Branding Naturally

I think that the very best way to capture the moment of pure passion that sparks the business for the future is with a Manifesto or Declaration of Passion. At it’s very core this document should become not only the basis for your brand but the foundation for your strategy, your culture, and all your marketing. There is nothing more natural than the passion that comes out of your Manifesto.

Letting Your Branding Develop

The secret to letting a brand manifest naturally is to pay attention to it. To make it a consistent element in all of your outward facing marketing materials. To nurture it, to give it air, and to make sure that everyone on your team understands it and plays by its rules.

As the branding begins to fully manifest, that’s the moment to codify it and to preserve it for the future. This is your best option to capture the branding naturally and at the same time, preserving it for the future.

What is a Brand Manual?

A brand manual is technically a guide that keeps all your (design) intentions on the straight and narrow. It’s a document that shows you what your ‘company’s fonts’ are. Which palette of colors best embodies your business. And it also provides everyone who designs for your company, instructions on how to make sure that each piece of collateral looks like it came from the same company. You are right to sigh and say it’s not an easy task!

Why are Brand Manuals Important?

At this point, many of you may be now wary of brand manuals making business designs rather boring, or uninteresting even. That’s not entirely correct, and that is not what they are for. Brand manuals let your designers be creative by prompting him/her to focus on the bits that can add value to your business, rather than changing the fonts and colors just for the sake of being different. In short, brand manuals help keep businesses identity intact.

Additionally, brand guides help you build not only trust but also consistency with your customers thanks to the fact that with a brand manual, everything being produced is in a standard style. However, this is not to mean that everything needs to look the same, the point here is that they all ought to look like they are coming from the same company.

It goes without saying that every business, whether small, medium or corporate, needs a brand manual. A Brand manual will save you both time and money, and most importantly, it will help you project a better image; probably what every business owner needs.

Brand Manual Examples

It’s not entirely possible to outline all the brand manual examples that are currently available. However, regardless of their purpose and design, they all conform to a kind of format which centers on these six aspects:

1. Naming,
2. Logo,
3. Colors,
4. Typefaces,
5. Pictures, and
6. Lingo

What makes a good brand, is a simple name, a logo that is related to what you are doing and easy to identify, colors that are visible and easy to associate with your company, and finally, pictures that while different, are also consistent.

First of all, there are three traits that all effective branding guides have in common:

Inform

All effective branding guides do a great job of informing their audience about the brand and the idea behind it. One important thing to keep in mind is that you have to know what your audience looks for in brand standards. For example, if your main consumers are going to be designers, then you must make sure that the brand guide is visually quite detailed. A different approach would be needed if your main consumers were to be sportspersons. Here are a few brands that do a great job at being informative:

• Adobe: Their 60-page brand guide is one of the most detailed and exhaustive documents of its type. They knew that the main market for them would be developers, and they have designed the guide to suit that particular taste.
• Firefox: The Firefox guide aims at communicating ideas in an efficient manner. The text and documents are not as extensive as Adobe’s. But they are still very creative and make sure that all the information is conveyed properly without becoming too stuffy.

Inspire

Inspiring the team and company is an essential aspect of any branding guide. Without a great band, ideas and corporations tend to be monotonous. A company needs to have its own unique personality, and this should be evident in the branding guide. After all, inspiring the team in the whole point of a brand. A few examples of brands that understand this concept:

• Skype: The Skype branding guide does a great job of explaining the Skype cloud and showing all the applications that are possible with it. A designer going through this will immediately feel a tinge of inspiration while looking at these options.
• Easy.com: The branding guide of this company offers a very clean and articulate voice that immediately defines the personality of the organization.

Enforce

It is also the function of a good buying guide to enforce the dos and don’ts of the company policy. For example,

• Apple: Apple is a company that is famous for the measures it takes to protect its products. Going through its branding guide will show you how seriously they take it.
• Facebook: Facebook’s branding guide can be quite strict for a company that is all about creating a people’s network. You will find a number of rules and policies that should be adhered to.

Hopefully, this post would have helped you increase your understanding of branding guides. Remember, the best way to learn something new is to carefully study successful models from the past.

If you’re looking to create your own branding guide, be sure to check out Finding Brand: The Brand Book Tutorial , by our co-founder, Tisha Oehmen.

And when you do, you will find a wealth of knowledge, ideas, and almost all backed up by solid research. It’s interesting, meaty, and guaranteed to make you think. It will either help you to justify your position on branding and brand management, or cause you to question it. But all of it helps to shape your opinions about branding, just as surely as it has shaped mine.

Here are 10 superb scholarly article son branding that are readily available as PDFs on the web right now — just for you. While it’s true that they can be a little dense and, in some cases, difficult to get through, pay particular attention to the abstract (summary), and the conclusions at the outset, then loop back through the research if you’re interested. Enjoy!

1. The Impact of Brand Image on Consumer Behavior: A Literature Review, Yi Zhang
2. Leveraging the Corporate Brand, David Aaker
3. Why Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling, Paul Zak
4. Brand Tone of Voice: a linguistic analysis of brand positions, Judy Delin
5. How Social Cause Marketing Affects Consumer Perceptions, Paul N. Bloom, Steve Hoeffler, Keven Lane Keller, and Carlos E. Basurto Meza
6. Bank on the Brand, Interbrand
7. Bringing the corporation into corporate branding, Mary Jo Hatch
8. Corporate branding and corporate brand performance, Fiona Harris
9. Creating the Brand-Driven Business: It’s the CEO Who Must Lead the Way, Michael Dunn and Scott Davis
10. User Experience Elements and Brand Promise, Virpi Roto and Mika Rautava

This is “the dress” what color do you see it as? blue/black or gold/white?

Personally, I thought it was a hoax until I showed the (to me) obviously blue/black dress picture to Mike and asked him what color he thought it was. When he answered “gold/white,” I was stunned. Well, truly, I thought he had seen the stir on the internet and was playing along with what had to be some sort of twisted hoax. But after a while, it became obvious, he really did see the dress as white/gold…and so did a lot of other people. People I like and trust. And here’s where the lesson begins.

We all experience the world differently. As we learned with “the dress,” sometimes we see different colors. And a lot of the time though, it comes down to the way we “feel” experiences. What may feel to me one way, might feel entirely differently to someone else, based on how we each perceive that experience and depending on our own past experiences. Each and every one of us experience an entirely unique world. It doesn’t matter if we are standing next to a friend or partner that we usually see eye-to-eye with, the way we experience our worlds is entirely our own.

Crafting Your Brand Perception

This is an important lesson, particularly when you’re trying to craft a brand position. Brand perception is in the hands of the beholder. That makes creating a brand difficult, to be sure. But our best defense in creating the brand perception we’re striving for is to be diligent and consistent with our brand. (Oh, and using high quality photos taken in good lighting helps a lot too.)

Don’t get discouraged if not everyone immediately understands or “gets” your brand. But also pay attention to the feedback you’re getting about your brand position. If you’re trying create a brand about a blue/black dress and a lot of the people you talk with keep interpreting your marketing as selling a gold/white dress, it’s time to change-up your message and material. If on the other hand, you’re selling a blue/black dress and that’s what people see — be consistent about how you position that dress so that it reinforces the story you’re telling and doesn’t confuse your audience. The more that you can keep your audience seeing the same things from your company, over and over again, the stronger your brand will be.

1. “A brand is a reason to choose.” – Fred Burt, Siegel+Gale
2. “Corporate & personal branding both require storytelling to be captivating. Stories provide context, meaning & the opportunity for relationship.” – Ryan Lilly
3. “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” – Jeff Bezos, Amazon
4. “A Brand is not a product or a promise or a feeling. It’s the sum of all the experiences you have with a company.” – Amir Kassaei
5. “A great brand is a story that’s never completely told. A brand is a metaphorical story that connects with something very deep – a fundamental appreciation of mythology. Stories create the emotional context people need to locate themselves in a larger experience.” – Scott Bedbury – Nike, Starbucks
6. “Branding is not just a product, it’s also a way of life, an idea, branding is actually leadership.”  – Onyi Anyado
7. “People build brands the way birds build nests. Through the straws and scraps they chance upon” – Jeremy Bullmore
8. “A great brand raises the bar — it adds a greater sense of purpose to the experience, whether it’s the challenge to do your best in sports and fitness, or the affirmation that the cup of coffee you’re drinking really matters.” – Howard Shultz, Founder, Starbucks
9. “The future of branding is marketing with people, not at them.” – John Morgan
10. “Branding is about everything.” – Tom Peters, The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE

What’s your favorite branding quote? Share it below!

Branding Strategies that Work

1. Focus Internally – Even if your brand never meets the “light of day” in an advertisement, you can create a brand entirely by focusing on getting the entire team to deliver your brand promise for you. If your team can constantly deliver your brand promise each and EVERY time they interact with your customer, word will spread. Over time, you’ll be wildly successful.
2. Guerilla Tactics – It always seem to be the way of it: the most unexpected places that we meet a brand are also the most memorable. What out of the box ideas can you generate that will present your brand in a way that will transform it from ordinary to extraordinary? The more off-the-wall but relevant, the more likely it is that you will transcend into memorability. So get creative!
3. Consistency – It’s the most boring element of creating a brand. But the more consistent you can be about applying your brand in EVERY SINGLE externally facing moment, the more recognizable your brand will be. This strategy is really all about execution and the better you execute, the better your brand will be.

Ready to implement your Branding Strategies?

These three secret (and ridiculously simple!) branding strategies will help set your business on the path to success.

The best part about them? You can carry them out regardless of your position, your budget, or your authority. So what are you waiting for? Get busy implementing your brand today!

First a Branding Pen Story

When I had oversight of the marketing department at U Lane O Credit Union in Eugene, Oregon, we were the company that had the corner on the pen market. Our members (and the community at large) were fanatical about our pens. They L O V E D them! We constantly had stories about all the places our pens had been seen, while our members traveled the world. If social media had been as a big a player then as it is now, we would have run an ongoing contest for the most exotic place one of our pens had been spotted (with photographic evidence required to win).

This was a hazard of going away to a planning session when working in the Executive Wing…

Yes, we spent a LOT of money on pens annually. We’d buy them by the tens of thousands. And we would happily hand them out at every single opportunity. As a line item in the marketing budget, it was a significant expenditure. And believe me when I tell you that those pens (and the budget line item associated with them) was hotly contested. For what we spent annually on pens, we could have bought a LOT of advertising, or a LOT of almost anything else.

But, as is so often the case, those pens grew our brand faster, farther, and more completely than any other advertising we could have engaged in. They literally built the credit union’s brand.

When and Why Branding With Pens Works

Let’s look at why the act of giving away those pens worked for the Credit Union (as opposed to all other pens that businesses hand out each and every day that quickly go unnoticed).

Beware the executive leaving for a strategic retreat…

1. These pens were unique — they stood out. There were no other pens being given away by anyone else that were remotely similar. When you saw one — you knew what you were looking at and which business provided it.
2. They were comfortable to use. The pens were so big that small fingers and arthritic hands could easily hold them and write with them.
3. They wrote well — a nice medium blue ball point pen that was smooth to write with and flowed nicely across the page.
4. We handed out enough pens for 1 out of every 7 people in our community to get a new one each year. And we’d been doing it for as long as anyone could remember.

The pens were a big branding win because they were functional, comfortable, identifiable, and plentiful. Over the years, they became a quiet but consistent element in the fabric of the community–just like the Credit Union did.

The trick to advertising with pens is to do it in a BIG BIG way. Find a distinctive pen style and stick with it. Make sure they write well (not much is worse than a scratchy pen) and are both a fair representation of your brand while not being too expensive or cheap.

And then buy a lot of them for a lot of years in a row. Give them out frequent and often — by the handful. As your pens become known throughout  your community — so will your business’s brand.

And one day, everyone will accept your pens (and your business) as a critical element in the fabric of your community. Not bad for a pen right?

Benefits of a Brand Camp

5 Simple Steps for Branding Your Business

1. Create your branding vision

The first step in branding is to determine how you want your brand to look and sound. This typically involves distilling a powerful truth about your organization into a concise, memorable message that is easily recognizable and actionable. A well-crafted external tagline is usually 5 to 9 words long—brief enough to be instantly recalled yet substantial enough to capture interest. It should be versatile, fitting seamlessly on business cards, letterheads, advertisements, and all other marketing materials.

2. Tell the branding story

The tagline really is nothing without the internal brand story that goes with it. I call this either a “Brand Manifesto” or a “Declaration of Passion.” The internal story gives life to the brand and helps to define it for your internal stakeholders. The brand needs this critical element to have enough emotional resonance to be interesting and to give yourself and your team something to hold onto.

3. Enlist your team in branding your business

Here’s one of the most important steps — enlist your team in creating how your brand works within your walls. I’ve spent the last week meeting with diagonal cross-sections of an organization and sharing with them their new brand story. We then asked each of them to brainstorm with us about what the company should keep doing to reinforce the new brand position. We then asked them about what the company should start and stop doing to help them live the brand.

The results are astounding. Each team member feels included in crafting this brand position and is both invested in and proud to be part of creating it. That outcome, far more than any single idea that came out of the brainstorming sessions, is the most important to helping this new brand succeed. Oh, and they’ve come up with some pretty amazing ideas to communicate the brand, too!

4. Get consistent about branding your business

Consistency is king when it comes to branding. After all, “branding” started with livestock branding to show ownership. For farmers, it “creates an indelible mark that allows ranchers to keep track of their stock, wayward cattle to be returned to their owners, and stolen cattle to be readily identified.” as noted in Modern Farmer’s Brand Awareness, Decoding Cattle Brands. The Smithsonian Magazine even notes that “Livestock branding dates back to 2700 BC.” Throughout time, as you can imagine, in livestock brands, a consistent mark made it easier to identify and defend. And branding livestock works. Livestock Identification Services notes that “In many cases, over a period of more than a hundred years, many old ranch brands have become better known than the people who owned them.”

The same thing is true when branding your business. Over the long haul, the more consistent you can become, making all your messaging have a similar look, feel, and voice, the more likely it is that your customers and potential customers will readily identify your brand and know what to expect from your business.

Branding is the exercise of creating your business’s history in the present. Be consistent about every element of your business, and your brand will not let you down.

5. Make branding your business fun

Branding your business doesn’t have to be all hard work. In fact, it works best when you can find ways to make it light and include unique ways to share it within your community. The more fun you can have with your brand position, the more likable your brand will become. Look for unexpected guerilla tactics to surprise and delight your customers and potential customers.

Paradux Media can make branding your business simple and fun!

Are you ready to brand (or re-brand) your business but not sure where to start? Contact our expert team at Paradux Media Group, and we’ll have you on the road to showing off your successful brand in no time. We have experience working with large and small companies, with the skills to expand your brand from your physical building to the digital universe. Learn how joining our flock will help you meet your goals.

In my perfect world, this level of clarity should be the “big idea” could take place any day — not just Super Bowl Sunday. After all, all good businesses are really in business to improve the world in some profound way. We should tell that story more often than just once a year.

Super Bowl 2015 – The Big Idea Marketing Winner

Hands down, I think the run-away winner at Super Bowl 2015 was Always with their #LikeAGirl Commercial. This commercial does a tremendous job of capturing their “big idea” and driving it home in a significant way. Full disclosure, I’m not usually one to jump on most women’s lib type positions, but I have to admit — this one got me. And I’m all in; it’s time to Rewrite The Rules for girls and fundamentally change our society’s acceptance of girls. Why this one worked an SO MANY, don’t is because it presented a relatively common assumption and it’s fallacies in a clear and honest way. It only presented the situation, the assumptions, and then shot the assumption down – in flames.

Carnival stepped up to big thought at Super Bowl 2015 in a significant way with their “Return to the Sea” commercial, featuring an excerpt of a speech from John F. Kennedy. Talk about taking the “fun” ship to an unprecedented “elemental ” level. This was a HUGE departure from their brand position — but it worked (if they back it up). And it imbues the “fun” ship with more substance than it had mere hours before.

McDonald’s joined the fray at Super Bowl 2015, a week after making a CEO change with a hugely on-position campaign that extends their brand positions “I’m Lovin’ It.” This is a great spot that has the potential to help them dramatically extend their position, and in the short run, gain a fair amount of foot traffic. Going forward, if they can just pick one brand position now (I’m lovin’ it) AND STICK WITH IT, they have a real shot at getting back their dwindling market share. (As readers of this blog, you’ll no-doubt know that the problem is that they haven’t picked Just One Thing and they’ve confused all their customers and potential customers. Check out my post on their poor ability to pick one thing from 2013 here.)

Microsoft gave it a good try with their “Empowering Us All” series. It was good — what it really missed was the chance for each of us to connect emotionally with the proposition. The ideas presented were good — but I have to admit a disconnect with how a “Brilliant Bus” or outfitting my child with prosthetics applies to ME. And at the end of the day, great marketing is really all about “me“. That’s why the Always spot worked, as a female, I can connect with the message and feel moved to want to change the perception.

http://youtu.be/7cw4jmKQs0E

Coke also gave it a try with their #MakeItHappy spot. Unfortunately, the idea was a little too esoteric and too removed from my (personal) ability to influence. Sure, I’d love to live in a world in which technology helps to make us all happy — but, not at the expense of lies and falsehoods — which seemed to be a necessary component to the #MakeItHappy spot.

Dodge showed up in a big way for their centennial with their #Dodge Wisdom spot at Super Bowl 2015. There wasn’t much that could go wrong here, get a handful of people who’ve lived more than 100 years to share their wisdom and equate that to the wisdom Dodge has learned over the last 100 years. Earth-shattering? No. Smart? Absolutely!

Strangely, rounding out the Big Idea Marketing ideas at this year’s Super Bowl 2015, was American Family Insurance. They highlighted 5 unknown singers (and 1 really, really famous one), to give them a shot at their American Dream. I’m not sure it worked, but it was a good try and props for the effort. It, like Coke’s, failed to give me a way to connect with the Big Idea personally, but it was a feel good — and I can see how it fits into their brand position.

So that was the game, now what?

I’m *hoping* that this year’s Super Bowl 2015 commercials merely mark the beginning of the brand’s overall embrace of Big Idea Marketing. How great would it be to live in a society that didn’t feel it was necessary to “dumb down” an idea so that the masses could both understand and accept it? Let’s make 2015 the year of smart marketing that changes the world, while it makes a profit for business. The ideas don’t have to be mutually exclusive — in fact branding and market, dominance tends to work best when brands aren’t afraid to share their big idea and to enlist customers, and potential customers into their ranks.

Our first goal, when we take on a new client, is to figure out how to make their brand more likeable. This is one of the most critical elements to any successful advertising and (especially marketing) campaign. Without likeability, we’ve got nothing and neither does the client.

The good news is, there are three easy steps that you can do to make your business more likeable. Following these steps will bring you more business, more clients, and (most importantly) more money. Now that’s something to smile about!

Three Steps to Creating Likeability

1. Be Pleasant. Unless your brand is about angst, anger, or being an outsider, consider trying to make every customer (and potential customer) interaction cheery. Be genuinely glad to see them. Answer the phone as if its a pleasure, not a burden. And try to go the extra mile to “make someone’s day.” In short — find a pleasant brand personality and see how many ways you can share it’s light with your community.
2. Focus on the Positive. In the best sense, what is it your business brings to the community? How does your product or service change lives? (or just moments?) If someone chose to do business with you — what’s the promise? Now tell that story in as many ways internally and externally as possible.
3. Get Consistent. Seriously – the more consistent you are representing your business to your community (pleasantly), the more likeable your business will become. That’s because when a business is consistent, their customers and potential customers come to know what to expect from them. And, generally, we like to know what to expect from a business.

Following these steps isn’t going to make your business successful overnight, but it will move your business down the path of creating likeability – and likeability almost always wins.

Here are 6 crucial tactics that will help your small business succeed in 2015.

1. Social Media, You’ve got to be there.

Here’s the thing. Whether you like it or hate it, social media is probably where your audience is. Don’t believe it? If you haven’t seen the 2014 version of the Socialnomics video — do yourself a favor and spend less than 3 minutes watching it.

Social Media is a great way to reach your ideal customers where they are at. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google Plus are more than worth exploring. Which ones you need to implement will depend on your business, but some combination of these is necessary to help your small business succeed in 2015.

2. Email Lists are King.

As great as social media is, let’s face facts…you are not in control maintaining your connection with your audience. Although it’s unlikely, Facebook could shut down tomorrow, and you would have lost all your access to your fan base. What’s more likely though (than Facebook shutting down) is that your account might get deleted or frozen. Either way, you don’t control that connection. When you build your email list, you’re building a list of individuals who are interested in what you have to say, how you say it, and (potentially) becoming customers of your company at some point in the future.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t invite you to join our amazing community – click here for our FREE Breakthrough Tool to help you position your business for unprecedented success in 2015.

3. Your Website Needs to be the Backbone of Your Small Business.

If your small business doesn’t have a website, it’s LONG past time to get one. Websites need to be the center of all your marketing efforts. Have a sale? Make sure you have a landing page on your website for it. The more that you can use your website as the jumping off point for how your small business shows up in the world, the better off you’re going to be. And your website doesn’t have to be the latest and greatest, but you do have to be able to make changes to the content, consistently and regularly.

4. Pay Per Click — Yes Really.

I know, you’ve probably tried Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising and you decided it didn’t work, right? Well, there are two problems with that assumption. First, you may not have used the right PPC platform paired with the right message. Second, PPC is only as good as your landing page on your website is. If your landing page doesn’t compel your target audience to take the next step with you — you’re wasting your money in PPC. Try fixing those to things and you’ll find PPC is one of the most scale-able and responsive ways to advertise your business.

5. Set Your Small Business Up for SEO Success.

Yes, real SEO (the ability to be found for what you want be found for in search engines) is both time consuming an expensive. It’s the holy grail in today’s online marketing world. There are two halves to the equation when it comes to SEO, Onsite SEO and Offsite SEO. The good news is that you can control the Onsite SEO yourself, by simply investing a little time and energy on your website. Making sure each pages has at least 300 words, that you’re using keywords, and filling out your meta information for the page. Invest a little time in learning this critical skill now, and your results in the long-term will thank you for it.

And when you’re ready to pursue Offsite SEO, make sure you pick a good partner. You can do as much damage to your site rankings as good when you engage in Offsite SEO.

6. Brand Strategy is the Most Important Element.

Finally, having a brand strategy is the one crucial tactic you can’t afford to skip if you want to position your small business for success in 2015. If you can’t answer the question: “What does your business do” in under 30 seconds, you need a better strategy. While it might be fun and interesting to play with lots and lots of different aspects to your business — you can really only focus on one thing to be successful. It doesn’t have to be all you ever focus on, but it does have to be one thing at a time. If you can do that, you’ll save money, enhance your results and ensure your business’s success in 2015.

But the cold-hard reality is that getting out of the day-to-day and into the strategy mode can be quite difficult. It takes discipline, and it takes dedication.

Having a standing meeting at least once a quarter with a trusted advisor or experienced business coarch can help you to maintain your focus on the strategy, allowing you to steer the ship much with an eye for the entire journey, not just the next day or week.

If you don’t have someone you’re meeting with on at least a quarterly basis to discuss your strategy, it’s time. Of course there are a variety of coaches, consultants, and business advisors out there (we do it too). And the quality of work you’re going to get from them can be outstanding, really helping to push you through to the next level, with insights, tools, and knowledge.
But, if you’re not in a position to hire one right now, that’s OK. Look to a trusted peer in another (non-competing) business. Make an appointment to meet with them at least once a quarter to discuss your business strategy, asking for their input and insights along the way. Then do the same for them. Win-win.

When you’re really ready to take it to the next level, consider hiring an experienced business coach to provide feedback and insights is vital to making the breakthrough. If you’d like to see how that might work for you, please contact us to schedule a conversation.

Do you wish you had an expert person in your corner to whisper advice in your ear?

Do you wish you had that strategist to call on when you need some help?

What if you could get “real deal” business-building advice from industry experts AND IT WAS ABSOLUTELY FREE?

Whether you are just climbing off the corporate ladder or been at it for years, we could all use some extra help.

I’ve got the perfect resource for you – it’s the “Lady Biz Success Secrets Giveaway.” This Giveaway is dedicated to providing female entrepreneurs exactly what they need to make a positive impact on themselves, their families, and their communities.

Industry experts are giving away thousands of dollars of business-building advice and products (FREE FOR YOU)!

Claim your business resources now!

Check out just a few of the 20+ giveaways!

• Website Design
• Branding
• Social Media Engagement
• Project Management
• Business Strategies
• Home Study Courses
• Guest Radio Show Appearances

Too many to mention here!

I’m giving away our 6 Figure Breakthrough Assessment. Give me 4 minutes, and I’ll help you quickly and easily pinpoint EXACTLY why your business isn’t making more money and free PERSONALIZED tips to help you break through to the next level. Signup now to the right.

I think that the Lady Biz Success Secrets Giveaway is such a great way to give-back to all those brave women who start their own businesses, That I’m giving one lucky winner a full scholarship to my Signature Training Series: Create Your Brand. Smart business owners and marketers know that the single largest reason they are working way too hard is because they are getting lost in the day to day. And when that happens, they lose track of the strategic elements that could leapfrog their business forward to profound success.

SPECIAL BONUS GIVEAWAY:

Smart business owners and marketers know that the single largest reason they are working way too hard is because they are getting lost in the day to day. And when that happens, they lose track of the strategic elements that could leapfrog their business forward to profound success.

One lucky person will win a FREE scholarship to this COMPLETE brand building video series, valued at $1297, will help you regain (or create) an intentional focus on the strategy behind your business and marketing to create a solid foundation that will allow you to go further, faster in 2015.

Another Bonus!

My colleague Jennifer Haughey from Tweak Your Speak ™ created this giveaway as give-back to all those brave women who start their own business. And as a special bonus she’s giving everyone instant and free access for 3-months to her Renaissance Moms Club – The Nuts and Bolts of Work/Life Balance.

I urge you to take advantage of the lessons-learned and best-practices from those who have been where you are!

Grab your freebies here!

You don’t need to learn everything the hard way.

Here’s to your success!

photo credit H.Adam via Flickr

What’s your goal for 2015?

• To breakthrough to 5 Figures?
• 6 Figures?
• 7 Figures?
• or more?

If you want to position your business for a big breakthrough in 2015, NOW is the time to get started! There’s not a minute to lose! Do you know that a business with a solid brand can command a 9.45% PREMIUM * on all their products and services? Imagine making an extra 10% on every dollar you make in 2015?

How close would that change ALONE put you to reaching your financial goals in 2015? The first step to being able to earn that 9.45% PREMIUM on your products and services in 2015 is to intentionally create your brand.

If you’ve never gone through the process of intentionally creating your brand position, it’s not hard. It’s something you can do, even if you don’t have a creative bone in your body, or have the first idea on where to start.

Just in time for 2015, I’m super-excited to announce our Create Your Brand Video Series is again available! This 15-part video based class is designed to break down the process of creating your brand into small, digestible pieces – that YOU can do.

You’ll learn what elements you must have to create a brand that works for you, how to articulate the elements, and how to define them, so that you can start earning that 9.45% PREMIUM on all your products and services starting on January 1, 2015!

I want to breakthrough in 2015!

Honestly, this is the most transformative and profound program for your business ever! Thank you!! I love you!!!! -Liz Love, Essentially Liz Love

Whether your goal is to breakthrough 5 figures, 6 figures, or 7 figures in 2015, intentionally creating your brand can help to get you there, and there’s no better way to intentionally create your brand than with the Create Your Brand Video Series, taught by yours truly.

One of the biggest secrets in marketing is how you develop your brand. After working with a variety of different operations, I have discovered ways to captivate customers, develop marketing strategies, and implement the most effective campaigns, and I’m ready to teach then to you!

I was honored to have been recognized for my dedication to teaching when I was voted as one of the Top 30 Brand Gurus by over 22,000 professionals in my industry, and I’m ready to reveal to you the secrets that have helped me create beloved brands for many organizations. And best of all, you can do it at your own pace!

SPECIAL BONUS IF YOU ACT BEFORE SEPTEMBER 19, 2014

But right now, if you enroll before September 19, 2014, I’m going to throw in 3 group Q&A calls for you, where you can ask me anything you want about how you’re building your brand, where you might be stuck, or anything else you’re wondering about. You’re truly not in this alone, I’ll be right there to support you along the way.

Whether you’re having a tough time understanding a concept, just want to bounce your ideas around, or anything else, these group calls scheduled one each in October, November, and December will be just the solution to make sure you’re successful in creating your brand for 2015.

If you’re ready to breakthrough to a whole new level of business in 2015, let me guide you through the process. I know not everyone can afford (or even wants) personalized assistance in creating their brand. And the good news is that with this step-by-step video series, I’ve made it affordable for everyone to create an amazing brand for themselves or their business.

There aren’t any excuses anymore.

You’ll have all the tools you need to create your brand and to be able to command your 9.45% PREMIUM in 2015 so that you can breakthrough to your next level!

What are you waiting for? Get ready to breakthrough to the next level in 2015 by creating your brand today!

Yes, I want to breakthrough in 2015!

————-

* Umbrella brand price premiums: effects of compatibility, similarity, and portfolio size

The piece that you have to START with though, before you choose to rename a business is to check in with your motivations for WHY you want to rename the business.

• Was there a significant change that recently took place? Merger, Spinoff, Layoff, or Bankruptcy?
• Do you have BAD press and/or a BAD reputation?
• Is a Competitor simply too close to your name?
• Do you have multiple divisions that you want to try to unify?

Be honest and really check in on the WHY.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

Next, consider what kind of monetary and time resources you have to lend to the project in the short, mid, and long-term. Do you have sufficient time, staffing, and budget to share with the world your new business name? Or are you limited on time and money? Name changes aren’t cheap — particularly not big changes. You’re going to have to commit a marketing budget to share with your community and stakeholders WHY you made the change. What your new VISION is, and how you new name will help you accomplish that. This is more than just changing your logo — there is a story that needs to be told, and it’s incumbent upon you to tell it, thoroughly, and well — which usually means television and radio campaigns, backed up with in-person appearances at all the local community and civic organizations.

Consider what the name change would mean to your internal staff. These folks are the backbone of your business and a wrong step here can be more than troublesome, it can be devastating. In this realm, pay particular attention to the short, mid, and long-term implications of a name change. If you’re making a change, is it really something that can be gotten behind, can it create more/new energy? If you’re doing a name change to deal with BAD press or reputations — will your staff be helpful in eliminating that concern going forward, or will it be a fight.

Finally, be honest about the motivation you bring to the table. If you’re wanting a name change from an egoic standpoint – trying to put your stamp on the business, and it not be SIGNIFICANTLY served by making the change, be brave enough to NOT change the name. There are times, places, and reasons it makes sense to change a business name — but it’s rare.

Bottom line, there is no easy answer here — just a difficult choice. My best recommendation is to make the best decision you can to serve the short, mid, and long-term needs of the business. Don’t make a decision exclusively for the long-term at the expense of the short or mid-term. Because without those, you wont have a business in the long-term. And don’t make a decision solely based on the short-mid term, because you need this business to function in the long-term. You have to make the very best decision possible for the business.

If you’re looking for support, I can help you mitigate whatever needs to be mitigated based upon that decision in order to allow your business to thrive in the short, medium, and long-term.

The reality is that the first time a lead come into our orbit, they may not have the confidence in us to buy immediately. They need to feel like there is a relationship in place first. What that means is that you have to create and maintain a relationship with your leads from your first contact with them. Over time, that relationship will result in your first sale (YAY!). Your Sales Funnel doesn’t stop there, though, it’s just beginning. Your next step is to move them from the first product they bought, into another (bigger) product, and so on and so on.

Often, we see the first product sale as a product that’s relatively inexpensive and a good starting place. It’s something that solves a very real point of pain that your prospect is experiencing (something that’s keeping them up at night).

Your Sales Funnel Should Be about Relationship Building

The entire success of your sales funnel will be determined by how well you’ve constructed your system. Your goal is to ensure that every lead moves through the relationship building phase to need identification and ultimately purchasing.

A great first step to maximizing your sales funnel is to create that system for one customer. Make sure that you use your system with every lead you get from here on out. Refine it, add to it, and continually make it better. It can be as high tech or low as you want. Just make sure you’re creating a system. You can use something like MailChimp to automate some of the email systems. But be sure to build a multi-channel approach to be most effective. You’ll need to include phone calls and in-person/virtual meetings to help you move the lead to the next level of the funnel.

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

is a lyric in George Harrison’s song, “Any Road”. While this certainly true in many aspects of our lives, nowhere is it more true than in business.
This is why, having a compellingly written Vision and Mission Statement is so critical. They help you to know where you’re going, and when you know where you’re going, you know which road will get you there.

The Vision Statement should be a clear and concise statement that points you to a desirable future state — one that may never actually be attained. But the likelihood of it actually being realized pales in comparison to pull and the goal of the achievement.

The Vision Statement represents WHY your company exists.

Your Mission Statement, by comparison, should be a clear framework for HOW your company will achieve the Vision.

When you have a Mission Statement, it can give you a framework for evaluating opportunities and making decisions for your business. It certainly is a cornerstone of establishing your brand, and it helps your employees get on board and help you to achieve the Vision.

Even if you’re a solopreneur, a Mission Statement will help to provide you clarity and serve as a touchstone while you’re working hard on growing your business. It pays to remember WHY and HOW you’re doing this in the first place, so that when you get caught up in the day to day, you have something to inspire you to keep moving forward.

I would suggest some of the following guides for crafting one if you’re in need.

• Inc. – Developing Effective Mission and Vision Statements
• Tuts Plus – How to Write Vision and Mission Statements
• Yahoo Small Business – Business Plan Basics: Vision Statements, Mission Statements, and Objectives

Get your free gifts by clicking here!

Video Transcript:

Hi there. I understand you’re thinking about or have just started a consultancy business. How exciting for you, this is the exact right moment for you to be taking part in something like this telesummit that you’re actually participating in, because you’re going to get so many fantastic ideas and quick tips and implementable ideas that will really move you forward and launch your business in a very significant way. Before we get to my quick tip, let me tell you just a little bit about who I am and why I’m sitting here sharing with you my ideas.

I’m Tisha Oehmen and I’m one of the co-owners of Paradux Media Group. We’re a small advertising agency in Oregon in the USA and we specialize in helping businesses really understand and marry online technologies and offline technologies so that they get the most maximum leverage results. One of the big conversations we have with all of our clients is who’s your target audience and I know that’s something that you’re probably struggling with as well. It always seems so counterintuitive because as a new business owner, you want and you need to serve everyone, both from a financial standpoint and also from a egoic standpoint.

The reality is there is a set of individuals that you will serve far better than anybody else. There is a set of individuals out there that you have a higher probability of connecting with and really creating a truly lasting relationship with. As you know in coaching in particular, it’s all about that personal intimate relationship and that’s really truly where you need to focus your consultancy. That’s that niche market that truly is exactly what’s right for your business.

The question really becomes then, “Well how I figure out what that is?”, because it seems daunting and it seems complicated. The answer is stunningly simple and it’s simply to look in the mirror and figure out who you are and what you like and who you gravitate to. This is a very personal business, this consultancy business and it’s really truly about connecting with people who are like you at the end of the day. If you’re a woman in her mid-40s who has an advanced education, who maybe likes to exercise or doesn’t, who likes to garden or doesn’t, who likes to golf or doesn’t, whatever it is, whatever your list of passions and your interests are, you’re probably going to resonate most closely with people who are exactly like you.

That’s a really good way to take a quick whack at who your target audience is and to really get crystal clear right out the gate about who it is you’re looking for. You’re looking for more people like you, and if that feels a little too close and there’s probably nobody else in the whole world exactly like you, well then take a look at who your close friends are because your close friends are also going to be the people who will most likely gravitate to you. They have pretty distinct personalities as do you, and those personalities match and your interests match, and all of the stuff about where you are at this point in your life matches.

That makes it so easy if you’re working with a coaching client to really start off in a very common place and to be able to move forward in a significant way so that you have the opportunity to truly help your coaching client move forward and to really leapfrog their business. That’s something that I would really encourage you to look at is both in the mirror, who am I and what are my interests and who are my best friends and what are their interests.

Now, I’m not saying, not even for a second that you’re not going to start working with a 50 year old man who might walk through the door and seek your services. That would be just stupid, but you’re not intentionally seeking those 50 year old men. You’re intentionally seeking and you’re putting out there that you want to work with women who are like you, if you are a woman. If you’re a 50 year old man, then the entire story is different and I hope you can make that translation, but if you really truly want to get tight and super focused around who it is you’re trying to reach, and by the way, that’s the only way you’re going to be successful in reaching them, then you have to start somewhere in an easy, easy, easy place. Quick tip is to look in the mirror and/or look at your friends.

There are so many different issues that we see other small businesses struggle with. In fact, so many so that I ended up putting together a webinar that’s free on my website. I’m going to make it available to you right here. It’s the three common mistakes that we see small business owners make over and over and over again that keep them struggling for cash and customers. It breaks my heart that so many businesses struggle for cash and customers in this world in which they really don’t need to, and so I took the time and the energy to put together this online webinar. It’s free on my website. I think the link might just be below this video so go ahead and click on over to it if it’s something that interests you, and my whole goal here is simply to help steer you away from making significant issues, making these specific problems in your business because they’re totally avoidable and they’re completely things you shouldn’t do.

As an added bonus, I’m also including just for you guys on this telesummit the opportunity to get the 10 Secret Marketing Tips that Every Small Business Owner should know, so that you are really starting from a strong, strong place and you have the opportunity to really leverage your business moving forward. I hope that you’ll take the opportunity to stop on over and check those out. Do by all means look me up on social media. We’re out and about there, but don’t miss this opportunity to really move forward on your business and to learn from these really common mistakes that so many businesses make. You don’t need to make them. This is how you get around that problem.

I hope that this has been helpful to you. Once again, I’m Tisha Oehmen. I’m over at Paradux Media Group and I hope that you have so many blessings and so much success with your business. I just can’t wait to see what you can do. Congratulations. Bye bye.

Video Transcript

Hi there.  How are you today?

Hey, I wanted to take just a few minutes today to talk a little bit about a question I get asked a lot and that is, “How does social media privacy interact with advertising and where’s the line and what are my options?”  I thought it would be a really great blog post today, so I thought we would go ahead and take care of it.

Before I get into that, let me tell you a little bit about what the goals are for today.  Hopefully by the end of this talk, you’ll understand exactly what the advertising implications are in online marketing in today’s world and you’ll understand why they are important to marketers and why, actually, as a consumer they’re important to you as well.  You’re also going to understand, hopefully, some of the privacy choices you can make around social media. Specifically, around what you see when in your Facebook timeline.

Finally, we are going to understand how you can use those preferences to set them up to your advantage so that you can have a better experience online.  That’s just a little bit about what we are going to cover today, but before I get into that let me tell you a little bit about who I am and why I’m sitting here talking with you about this topic.

I’m Tisha Oehmen. I’m the Chief Operating Officer at Paradox Media Group.  Paradox Media Group, if you aren’t aware of it, is an advertising agency and we specialize in integrated advertising.  So taking a message that plays both in traditional advertising; television, radio and print, and helping it carry through online so that together you get the full force of that message.  As a business you can really take advantage of that in a very significant way.  That’s what we do and that’s why we are sitting here talking with you today about how we use social media and online marketing in order to really reach some target audiences.

Before I do that, if you haven’t seen the latest and greatest Socialnomics 2014 video about the state of social media today, you really owe it to yourself to do so.  Go ahead, if you would, and just hit pause on this video and look right below this video and you will see the link to the Socialnomics video.  Go take a look at it.  It’s three and a half minutes, but it will blow your mind.  All right, ready?  Hit pause.  See you in a second.

You’re back?  Wasn’t that cool?  It’s so amazing what social media is doing today in terms of how it’s truly affecting culture and it’s truly changing lives.  With all of that happening and with the significance that it takes in order to really understand and harness the power that comes with that, social media is a really big deal.  As an online marketer where you have the opportunity to advertise in social media, which you do in almost every social media platform today, you can really get good results because people are telling you specifically who they are, specifically what they like and specifically why they care about certain things.

That allows you to reach out and touch someone personally in a way that you simply cannot do on television or in print or in any of the other traditional media areas.  So social media is a really big place to do some very highly targeted advertising in today’s world.  This means advertising on Facebook.  You can advertise on Twitter.  You can advertise on LinkedIn. All the social media platforms have advertising avenues available, all with varying degrees of customization and it really helps as a marketer to be able to reach a very, very highly targeted, very specific individual in a very significant way.

Now there are other ways that online marketing plays in today’s world as well and you’re probably familiar with some of these and some of these maybe not so much.  Websites are a huge component of every single online marketing system because the whole goal should be to be able to get traffic from wherever you’re advertising, back to your website.  All the other mediums certainly play with website and website is, in fact, the backbone of every online marketing scheme that is out there.  If not, it should be, they’re doing it wrong.

Pay per click advertising is a lot of what we are talking about when we are talking about social media advertising and that is simply the concept where I solicit a group of individuals, a target group, and I pay per click, or per impression, depending on how you set it up, to allow my message to reach those individuals.  Budgets vary.  They depend on your industry, they depend on what kind of a target you’re looking at.  You can spend anything from 25 cents a click, up to $15, $20 or more dollars per click and you just have to determine what’s right for your business and you have to determine what’s right in your industry.  For instance, if you were trying to reach someone in the nutrition industry’s weight loss, plan to spend a lot more because that’s a very competitive world out there, than perhaps furniture sales would be. That makes sense, right?  Excellent.

Now the new thing in pay-per-click is called, “remarketing” and you’ll have seen this.  You may have not thoroughly understood what’s happening, but you will have seen it out there in today’s world.  What happens is you go to a website and on that website they put a cookie in your browser.  A cookie is just a little tracking device.  Then they go to Google and they tell Google, “Hey, I want my ad to appear in front of all of these people who’ve been to my website for the next three months.”  So you know you’ve seen this.  You go to a website and then for the next three to six months all you see in the sidelines on your Google ad and in your browser are ads for that website.  That’s called “remarketing.”

While it’s a little creepy perhaps for the user experience when it gets down to it, it’s actually a really great way from a marketing standpoint to put yourself back in front of people who showed some degree of interest in who you were in the first place.  So they have already come to your website, they maybe got distracted, had to walk away, go chase a screaming kid, who know, whatever, they left your website, but they still have that problem that they came to your website to solve.  So your ad, being injected into their browser, continues to put you at the top of mind and continues to give you the opportunity to engage in further conversation with them.  That’s a really big, big thing.  It’s brand new, but it is hot.

The other big thing that’s pretty new and pretty hot is called “directory listings” and this is really more of a tactic you would use if you’re trying to increase visibility for your website.  You go out to Google+, Bing, Yahoo, Four Square and the list is literally a mile long of all the different directories that are out there and you have to make sure as a business owner, your business is listed in them.  It’s very time-consuming.  It’s fairly tedious work, but it is important to maintain that online credibility and that online visibility.

Hand and hand with directory listings goes search engine optimization, which is really the long-term game around how to get your website to appear in front of people who are interested in what you are talking about.  Here’s the difference, pay-per-click is like renting your house.  When you stop paying per click, traffic stops coming to your website.  With search engine optimization, it’s more like owning your home.  It’s a long game in search engine optimization, like a 30 year mortgage kind of a deal, but someday if you’re engaged in search engine optimization you can stop paying to have people visit your website and they will continue to find your website because of the search engine optimization work that you’ve done. You’ll see that out there.  The whole goal in search engine optimization is to be able to get your website to do what’s called “rank” which usually means hit the first page of Google and whatever your search terms are.  You can do it either nationally and internationally, or you can do it just locally here in the Rogue Valley. Lots of options around search engine marketing.

Then, of course, the last really big online marketing system is email marketing and that really is where you have the most control over the interaction that happens with those individuals.  It’s your cheapest form of advertising once you get them on your list and really your email list should be converting money into your business on a regular and ongoing basis. That’s where you get all those direct mail marketing messages from all the different businesses you’ve shown some interest in.

Hopefully they’re all called what’s double opt in.  You sign up on a website for additional information, they send you an email that says, “Hey you signed up on our website for additional information.  Would you really like to receive that?” You say, “Yes, yes I would really like to receive that.”  That’s called a double opt in.  That’s actually the standard for email marketing and if you’re not doing it that way, you need to be.  Particularly if you are doing anything in Canada.  There are new spam laws in Canada that you simply have to comply with and double opt in is the only way to go.

In theory now, gone are the days where you go to a business meeting and you get somebody’s business card and you just add them to your newsletter list.  That’s not the right way of doing.  You have to invite them to apply to your email list, and you have to get a double confirmation that they really want to receive the information from you.  That’s how we do email marketing these days.

We’re actually here to talk about why that’s important, all that online marketing stuff, why it’s important from a marketing standpoint, from a business’ standpoint and how it impacts you from a privacy standpoint and how you can improve the odds of seeing what you want to see, right?  The reason it’s important from a business standpoint is because it’s where the people are today.  We have the ability to reach people at unprecedented levels and to really get very clear about who we are talking to in online marketing.  We’ve never had this degree of clarity before around who it is we are talking to and why it matters.

As a business owner, this translate to lower dollar costs to advertise your business and more effective results.  That’s just a really nice, sweet formula that all of us are seeking when talking about advertising.  The other piece is, since it is where the people are, you get an enhanced credibility as a business for participating there.  Trust me, even if you’re not as a business on Facebook, people are talking about your business on Facebook.  Don’t you want to know what they are saying?  Well if you’re there you have the opportunity to not only know, but to be invited into the conversation.  If you’re not there, you absolutely do not.  So get there.  That’s the bottom line with online marketing.

Specifically we also like it because it allows for massive customization everywhere.  As an individual interacting in today’s world, we expect the technology there to be able to benefit us enormously.  Honestly, in my life, and probably in yours as well, it makes a huge difference in how I experience the world.  It makes our experiences better.  Let me give you an example.

I have been a Netflix subscriber now for years and years and years.  Over the many, many years I’ve been with Netflix I’ve told Netflix what I thought of, it tells me today 1,785 movies.  Seriously, apparently I need to get a life because I watch way too many movies.  Over the course of many, many, many years I’ve told Netflix what I thought about 1,785 movies and based on my ratings Netflix is really, really good at understanding what kind of movies I want to see.  Today if Netflix tells me that the movie I’m about to rent is only two stars I actually trust it because Netflix knows better than I know whether or not I’m going to enjoy the movie.

Occasionally my partner Mike and I will get a little crazy and we will rent a two star movie on Netflix and we will instantly kick ourselves because we know better to doubt Netflix’s ability to understand what it is we like and it doesn’t matter what actor or actress is in it. It doesn’t matter what the plot line says in the previews.  The reality is if Netflix thinks we are going to hate it, we’re going to hate it so don’t even try to get around it.  That’s a really, really big thing because that enhances my experience online and it makes it so much better when I use my Netflix to be able to understand what kind of movies and entertainment I want to get out there and watch.

Now the same thing is true when I talk about online ads.  In Facebook for instance, and we’re just going to talk about Facebook because it gets too crazy if I try and talk about all the different online ad experiences.  In Facebook in particular, you have the ability to really understand who the person is and to get really tight around how you’re putting your message together in play.  For instance, if I was selling a Jeep accessory I could get online on Facebook and create an ad that went to all residence is the United States over the age of 18 who happen to have an interest in a Jeep Wrangler.  Facebook knows this because we tell Facebook exactly what it is we like to do.  We tell Facebook what we like to see.  We interact with Facebook and our friends interact with Facebook, further informing Facebook’s understanding of who and what we are.

This is just like Netflix, but it’s on steroids, right? In Netflix I was giving them voluntarily my opinion about 1,785 movies and in Facebook I’m giving them voluntarily my opinion about almost everything in my world if I’m participating in Facebook in a significant way.  Even if I’m not participating with Facebook in a significant way, my friends probably are and based on what my friend’s opinions are about things, people can extrapolate what it thinks my opinions about things would be.

Certainly when you get to that level, if you’re not putting on Facebook very often, you’re not going to have a terribly customized experience and we are going to talk about that a little bit in the future.  Really, think about it, everything that is happening in my world.  Am I interested in Jeeps?  Am I interested in fishing?  Am I interested in social media?  Whatever it is, Facebook knows and Facebook has the opportunity to sell that knowledge to willing advertisers who are trying to reach people who like Jeeps.  People who like fishing.  People who are interested in social media.  All of that really creates a very specific and very targeted opportunity for a business to reach a very specific individual and for that very specific individual to discover things that they are probably interested in, just like I do with Netflix, and to really have a great, rich experience.

That’s one option.  Of course you can get really, really fine [inaudible 16:07].  You can say, I want my Jeep lid to be shown specifically only to people who live within a ten mile radius of the city of Medford, Oregon who are between the ages of 35 and 40 who like Jeep Wranglers and, also, have liked previously the Jeep page for instance. You can get super tight around who those are or do have children present or don’t have children present in the home, or are homeowners or aren’t homeowners.  The list is a mile long of the specific customizations you can get to with Facebook because we tell Facebook so much about us.  It’s an online marketers dream.

But here’s the thing you have to know.  As a consumer and as a user of Facebook, that is that you are in control of what you see on Facebook.  Now truly the only option to make sure you never see an ad on Facebook is honestly not to participate at all on Facebook.  If you’re worried at all about online privacy or you’re very concerned about how you show up on the Internet, my best advice to you is don’t show up on the Interest.  Because we live in an online world today and information privacy, in my personal opinion, is truly just an illusion.

That being said though, you still can customize your experience on Facebook in a very significant way.  You have options.  You’re in control.  You choose what you share on Facebook with whom publicly.  Of course you’re sharing it with Facebook, that’s a whole different topic, but you also get to choose how you interact with that.  Facebook has recently relaunched their privacy rules.  You’ve probably have confronted a Facebook privacy check-up recently.  It’s a little guy who comes up and says, “Hey let’s check out your privacy and make sure you’re sharing only what you want to be sharing.”  The reason is Facebook has been sued obviously about their privacy issues and they really try very hard to be very clear with you about who you are sharing what status post with and when.

Here’s the thing from an online standpoint, first of all Facebook knows what I’m interested in.  This is an ad that shows up in my Facebook timeline.  It’s a social media strategist trying to get me to come to a free online learning event and based on my preferences and who I am on Facebook, Facebook thinks that’s something I might be interested in and they may or may not be right.  Here’s the thing you need to know and that is you get to choose what you see on Facebook.  All you have to do when you see an ad you don’t like or doesn’t resonate or that doesn’t feel right to you, is look right up in the top right corner there’s a little itty, bitty arrow and if you click that drop down arrow you are going to get an option that says, “I don’t want to see this.” or “Hide all ads from this social media strategist.” Those two options, when you click them, are going to modify your ad settings in Facebook so that you see only more of what you want to see and you see less of what’s not relevant to you.

Myself, on my Facebook stream, I am religious about clicking that little button and getting rid of all game notifications from my friends.  I can’t stand them.  They absolutely make me crazy.  In my online Facebook experience, because I’ve been very, very diligent about that over the years, I almost never see a game notification at all in my Facebook timeline.  When I see ads that don’t appeal to me or annoy me or they’ve appeared too often or I’m just not the right target demographic for them, I let Facebook know by clicking that little button and saying, “I don’t want to see it or I don’t ever want to see an ad from X, Y or Z company ever again.”  I tell Facebook why and that helps Facebook to more customize my experience online so they are showing me ads that are actually more relevant to me.  Although it’s not very often, I have found some great companies that I currently do business with because they advertised in my Facebook feed and it was a good fit for me and for my business.

Bottom line on Facebook is you are in control, you can customize your entire approach on Facebook and it is, from a marketing standpoint, one of the lowest, most effective forms of communicating with a target audience.  It allows us to reach right out and get right to the heart of who it is we are trying to reach.  At the end of the day it’s trackable, which is something I cannot say for a good portion of the advertising and marketing mediums that we have out there.

Today we covered just briefly some of the advertising implications of online marketing.  We talked about what privacy choices you can make in social media and how to better customize your experience in Facebook.  We talked about how, if you’re really concerned about that, the only way in today’s world to get around the privacy implications that are in online marketing is just not to be online which, unfortunately for a lot of us, is simply not an option.

I hope that was helpful.  As always, if you have questions, please leave them below and I’ll be happy to answer them.  In the meantime, have a wonderful day and I’ll talk to you again real soon.

Bye-bye.

 

 

Coach?

Mentor?

Counselor?

Mastermind Leader?

I know for a lot of consultants, while they are amazing at helping others identify what’s not working and fix it — it’s MUCH harder when it’s your own business. (OK — I know this from personal experience.) For some reason, when it’s our own business it suddenly gets a lot harder. While we may know what we need to do, actually making it happen doesn’t actually happen.

When Tracey Hopkins originally approached me about participating in her 5 Days to Kick Start Your Consultancy Business program, I immediately knew it was something I wanted to be a part of. The concept is simple, over the course of 5 days, (July 7-11, 2014), learn from experts and entrepreneurs who have been where you are and who really understand what it takes to get your business out of the starting blocks and on the road to success.

Each expert shares with you a short strategy or idea which you can implement right away in your business and start seeing results. Each expert is also offering you access to a free gift which you can use to help to really start seeing success in your business. This program is worth thousands of dollars, but is available to you FREE — yes FREE. All you need to do is to signup right here and Tracey will send you all the expert’s tips.

>> CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

This is a totally free, no strings attached event which will give you access to an amazing array of resources and help from people who really know what they are talking about and can show you how to kick start your Consultancy Business in 5 Days. So sign up today and give yourself and your business the best possible change of success.  

Finding Brand books was particularly difficult for me since I was interested in only finding legitimate brand book examples — not fakes or intellectual property that had been inappropriately published on the internet. My requirement for my list was that the brand book examples had to be hosted on the company’s official website, whose brand book was on display. And I was successful in gathering a lot of brand books with that rule. But having spent hours and hours and hours looking for them online, I know how difficult finding them can be.

The Best Brand Books Examples List

That’s why I created the Best Brand Books Examples list at List.ly. I started with 30 of my favorite brand books and invited you to add your favorites to the list. As a bonus, each person can vote on their famous brand book examples so that the best appear at the top.

Would you take a moment to add your best brand book examples to the list and vote for your favorite books? Remember, there is no right or wrong answer regarding which is the best brand book example, but I’m betting that there are some that are much more popular and useful than others. And I know you can help us find them and build the Best Brand Books Examples List ever!

Best Brand Books Examples

Promotional Calendar Template Transcription

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Hi, I’m Tisha Oehmen from Paradux Media Group, and I thought it might be something fun today to mix things up, if I did a Google hangout rather than just typing into the blog post. I wanted to talk specifically about a promotional marketing calendar and why it’s something that you should consider using in your marketing adventures. The reason is simply this: if you don’t have a promotional calendar, the odds are exceptionally good that you’re not going to do a fantastic job of planning intentionally your marketing as you move forward throughout the year.

What happens is you end up on July 2nd saying, “Oh, gosh. There’s a 4th of July thing coming right up. I should do something for that.” Then you’re scrambling about like mad, trying to come up with a 4th of July promotion, trying to get it printed, trying to get it done, and you’re spending far too much money, spending far too much time, and really creating just a whole hubbub of stuff that you don’t need to be doing simply because you didn’t have a plan.

I’m going to encourage you, really, to sit down every few months and look at your promotional calendar and make some intentional decisions around what it is you want to be promoting, what those key dates are for you in your industry, and making sure you have plans so that you’re really working forward on your plan toward building your own fantastic marketing plan.

I have my favorite little marketing calendar that I use. It’s pretty easy and you can find the link for it right down below so that you can grab your own copy of it. It’s just simply a spreadsheet and it simply lays out months – July, August, September, October, November – and it lays out each of the days of the month.

Then what you have the opportunity to do is just sit with that and look at the entire year all in one sheet and say, “What are the important things that are happening for us? Are we participating in a home show? Are we participating in the county fair? What are the big holidays that are really, really critically important for my business? What do I want to do around that? What is my promotional window? Do I want to be promoting two weeks in front of whatever my event is?”

Three weeks, four weeks, whatever it is, the calendar itself really helps you to get crystal clear about what it is you’re doing and what your promotional windows are so that you can do a fantastic job and an amazing job, but really intentionally planning your marketing.

Let me see if I can flip over here and show you what my promotional calendar template looks like. Just one second here while we try this fancy technology. See the screen share, and there it is. In theory, you should be able to see it.

This is the promotional calendar template that I really, really like. Like I told you a minute ago, you can download it from the link right below here and you can get your very own. Then all you do is you just go through and you fill in the things that are important.

If Halloween is important in your industry, you come over here and you write Halloween. Then you need to think about what your promotional window is. My guess is that it’s probably at least a few days and then you just come up here like that. You can come in … I like to highlight it so that I know that’s a promotional window, and I’m really focused hard on that.

You can do the same thing for Christmas, if that’s big in your industry. You do have to spell it semi-right though, it looks like, or even not at all. Goodness. Sorry about that. There you go.

Same deal here. We’re going to be promoting Christmas, let’s say, all of December, just for the novelty of it. In fact, Black Friday might be a big deal. We have the opportunity to come down and find Black Friday and really lay it in so that we know what our different marketing and promotional windows are. Then, of course, it makes sense that you have sort of the key that says, “The green Christmas plan is X, Y, or Z,” and so on and so forth.

Let’s see if I can get you back here. I think I can, I think I can. There we are. There you go.

All you do is you just fill it out and you figure out what it is. Then you put together that really special color-coded key – it’s really fancy – and you say, “Green for Christmas. It means that I need to be doing this, this, this, this, and this.” As I do each one of those things then I’m moving forward on my promotional calendar template, and I have a plan.

Remember, when you fail the plan, you plan to fail. Do not plan to fail with your marketing plans this year, okay? So, head on down to the link right below, grab your very own copy of my promotional calendar template, get to work on it, and start using it because it really will make a profound and big difference in your business.

I think that’s really what I wanted to cover today. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this. Please leave a comment below and let me know if you like this form of technology for sharing my thoughts on marketing with you, or if you really prefer them just to be written. Either way is fine by me. Just love to do what works best for you.

In the meantime, have a marvelous day. I’ll talk to you again real soon. Bye bye.

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What is a brand narrative doing for my business?

Simply put, your brand narrative provides context to your team, continuity through your business, and a future focus all at the same time. A good brand narrative is the incomparable force multiplier. This is because people naturally want to be part of something bigger, they want to matter, and they want their lives to have meaning. Most of all, they want to become part of a gripping narrative. Allowing stakeholders, employees, and even consumers to become part of that brand narrative is the secret to success. No easy task to be sure. But it’s a critical one for your business.

With a consistent and compelling brand narrative, employees become ambassadors for your brand and products; stakeholders promote them; earned media becomes easier to obtain and, perhaps most importantly, you can create a buzz within the industry and target audiences. And it’s as easy as telling a story.

What is a brand narrative going to require to get it written?

I’ve covered how to craft your brand narrative extensively on this blog (see below). But I can’t stress the importance of actually having your brand narrative written down enough. Take some time today to start crafting your brand narrative. You’ll be able to harness untold power from your team when you do.

So what is a brand narrative exactly? Take a look at these post for details on how to create your very own brand narrative. After all, who doesn’t like tools and resources to guide you on your way to creating your brand narrative.

• Start at the Beginning of the Brand Book
• What’s Your Brand Story?
• Your Brand is Your Story
• The Power of the Brand Narrative in the Brand Book
• Why You Need a Brand Narrative

When it comes to finding the best brand book examples, there are many factors to consider, such as industry, ideology, and personal preference. Often, the best brand book examples are the ones that you can find. Other times, the best brand book examples are the ones closest to your industry. And still, other times, the best brand book examples are the ones most closely aligned with your ideology.

So what are the BEST brand book examples? Well, I’ll have to leave that to you to determine, but here is a list of brand books that are available on the internet that I have found helpful in one way or another. (Some of these I discussed in my book, Finding Brand: the Brand Book Tutorial, or as part of the Brand Book Tutorial Series found here.) But no list I could put together would ever be complete. And the next brand book I find — or someone else finds — might be the missing piece in someone else’s project.

So I think the best solution to finding the best brand book examples is creating a crowdsourced list. To that end, I’ve started a list over at list.ly so you can add your favorite. If you’ve found brand books on the internet, you have found helpful, preferably hosted on the company’s website, please feel free to add them to our list. Then, when it comes time to find the best brand book example, visitors here (yourself included) will have an extensive list to choose from to find the best brand book illustrations they need.

Also — take a moment to VOTE for your favorite brand book below!

The list of the Best Brand Book Examples.

Marketing for Small Business List

1. The very best marketing is always Word-of-Mouth. I know, I own a marketing agency, and we make our living selling advertising and marketing to small business. But here’s the thing — NOTHING — and I mean NOTHING is better at converting to sales than enthusiastic customers. That being said, the single best way to drive word-of-mouth is to advertise! Be on social media, be on radio, television, and in print. Be aggressive with your advertising and you’ll find that your word-of-mouth referrals go UP. That’s because you’re being thought about more often, and it’s easier for relevant conversations to come up in the natural course of events.
2. Even though you have More Time than Money, you can still take significant steps to move the visibility of your business forward. One of the very best ways is to take some of your time and make sure that you list your website on all the relevant directories. An easy place to start is by heading over to Moz Local and see what profiles you have — and which you are missing. Then, make sure your business is listed on ALL of them. Remember, that you don’t have to do it all in one sitting, but your business will be better off for having done it.
3. Make lots of friends. No seriously — remember item #1, about Word-of-Mouth being one of the best methods of marketing for small business (ok and LARGE business)? Well the same thing is true about networking. Particularly when you have more time than money, joining a networking group can be a great way to spread the word and get people talking about your business.
4. Multi-Use tools are critical. A key to marketing for small business is to invest in tools that serve multiple purposes. So, for instance, investing in business cards and letterhead will serve you best when you’re just starting out. You can use business cards as a method for sharing contact information, reminding people about your business, and directing them to your website. Similarly, letterhead can be used for invoices, letters, proposals, and sell sheets. These pieces of your marketing are multi-use tools and are critical for small businesses.
5. You have to be strategic! I know, sometimes we get caught up in thinking that strategy is reserved for BIG business — but it’s not. It’s something that businesses of all sizes need to employ. You have to have a strategy and work it when you’re marketing for small business. the more you work your strategy the faster you will get where you’re going. One quick method you can employ to make sure you’re focusing on your agenda, not someone else’s, plan to do two things for your business before you open your email or answer your phone.

The trick though, once you brand has “grown up” is to NOT rebrand again if at all possible. Here are the 3 main reasons you should never brand thrice.

1. Give Your Brand a Chance to Mature. Just like you need and want the time to create your own identity after you graduate from high school, your brand needs time to grow into itself. It needs time to evolve and come into its own.
2. Resist the Urge to Tweak. I know, it’s hard to resist. But once you have your brand established — stick with it. You put a lot of time, energy, and thought into crafting your brand position. Don’t let the latest idea, product, or ad campaign derail your brand. Stay true – you’ll be glad you did in the long run.
3. You Have to Earn Top of Mind Awareness. You simply have to give your target audience the opportunity to come to understand and appreciate the nuances in your brand over time. And the first person who is going to get tired of your brand — is YOU. You must remember that a significant portion of your audience has not heard of your brand, and an equally significant portion is only just becoming aware of your brand. Changing your brand a third time is going to eliminate this audience from those who know your brand.

It’s natural to evolve your brand once, it’s even predictable that your brand will evolve twice — but just say no to brand evolution thrice.

Would you be interested? Of course you would. That’s just good business sense.

Now, what if I told you the single biggest marketing problem you have is something MOST businesses suffer from, in addition to it being among the easiest to solve. At least you’d know you’re not alone right?

Your Biggest Marketing Problem = FOCUS

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a big business or a small business, established business or startup, nationally-oriented or locally oriented, FOCUS is the single biggest problem. It’s so easy in business to get distracted by the opportunity right in front of your nose. The next great advertising opportunity you’ve been offered, the charitable organization that really needs your Title Sponsorship, or competing agendas. All of these lead to a lack of focus in your marketing strategy and they are the biggest problem your marketing faces.

Solving Your Marketing Problem

The good news is FOCUS is a relatively easy fix. To accomplish it, all you really need is a marketing plan. (If you don’t have one, check out this one out.) And armed with your marketing plan, staying focused requires that you pass every opportunity that comes across your desk through the plan. If it fits your marketing plan – great, go for it! If it doesn’t — it doesn’t fly.

I’m always happy to help business owners’ find their FOCUS. If your seems to be missing, book a complimentary consultation with me today and together, we’ll find it.

There are some beautiful and tricky logos out there that are truly art — but a lot of the time, the hidden meaning goes unappreciated because we see what we expect to see — nothing more. But when you really stop to look, the hidden meaning pops out and we are dazzled by the artistry and talent of the designers. This is what great logo design can do for a business.

Try to see the hidden meanings before you read the captions, you’ll like it all the more.

The astute viewer will note that the letters u and n, arranged next to each other look a lot like the letter S in a perpendicular direction.

Notice the 1 formed in the negative space between the F and the speed marks.

It’s little more obvious, but the ili in Families becomes a family — cute eh?

I like the cleverness of this one — at first glance, it looks like an outline of Africa, but on closer inspection, you’ll notice two faces in the outline. Brilliant.

The Bronx Zoo does a brilliant job in their logo of blending giraffes and buildings (notice the negative space between their legs). How perfect for the Bronx Zoo?

We’re pretty partial to fowl logos around here, so we were particularly interested in the chicken head-C that makes up the Chick-Fil-A logo.

This version of the University of Oregon logo depicts the outer line of the “O” by tracing the outline of the football stadium, Autzen Stadium; and the interior of the “O” with the outline of the track, Hayward Field. You’d almost think it’s all-sports-all-the-time at the U of O, but their academics are pretty solid too.

In the Sony Vaio logo, the first two letters represent the basic analog signal, while the last two letters look like a 1 and 0, representing the digital signal.

Gotham Books’ logo is represented by 3 open books stacked upon each other to create a skyscraper, a trademark of Gotham City.

This logo is brilliantly designed and almost what you should expect — the full range of human emotions.

Admittedly, this one is my favorite. Notice the PAIR of DUCKS that makes up the Paradux (pronounced Pair of Ducks) logo?

So often, we see logos hastily put together, or simply a version of glorified clipart. While the company may have subsequently engaged in branding and really honed in on what their brand is, their logo doesn’t tell that story. But I think there is nothing quite so good, clever, or obviously branded as hidden messages in logos, like you’ll see below. These companies have taken a lot of time and energy to add layers and depth to logo — and by extension their brand.

Take a few moments to appreciate the artistic and branding genius in these logos that you’ve probably seen many times — but never really looked at.

Do you see the arrow between the “E” and “x” (in white)?

The 2nd and 3rd “T’s” are two people sharing (or fighting over) a tortilla and a bowl of salsa.

The world’s most famous bike race. The “R” in “Tour” is a cyclist. The yellow circle is the front wheel of a bicycle, the “O” is the back wheel.

The arrow means Amazon has everything from A to Z.

The gap between the “K” and the “I” is a sideways chocolate kiss.

There is a dancing bear above the “BLE”. Toblerone chocolate bars originated in Berne , Switzerland , whose symbol is the bear. It features the animal on its flag and coat-of-arms.

See the ” 31″ embedded in the ” BR”? Thirty one-derful flavors!

Northwest Airlines. The circle is a compass. The arrow in the upper left corner is pointing..? North West Of Course !

See the gorilla and lioness (in white) facing each other?

The smiley half face is also a ‘g”.

The emblem for the Milwaukee Brewers. Baseball glove forms an “M” and a “B”.

Update: if you like these, be sure to check out “How Observant Are You When You Look at a Logo? part 2”!

http://youtu.be/lUtnas5ScSE

Did you notice that without a single word being spoken, the story, values, and raison d’être for Chipotle is made clear. This is a bold story, a brave story, and one that Chipotle clearly feels very strongly about. This is a potentially polarizing issue – not everyone will appreciate the message in this video. This is why a target audience is so critical! Chipotle isn’t looking for “everyone” to be their customers, they are looking for individuals who care about the quality and integrity of their food to be their customers. If you don’t care about those things, it’s okay, Chipotle doesn’t need your business. That’s because there are more than enough individuals who do care about the quality and integrity of their food and who passionate in those beliefs. There are also enough individuals who care, “some” about the issue that would periodically make a buy decision for a meal at Chipotle to keep them in business a long, long time.

How’s your brand narrative? Do you have a target audience that you are willing to bet on? If there is work for you to do there, check out my new book, Finding Brand: The Brand Book Tutorial for step by step instructions now to create a strong and powerful brand. Or if you just want to stick your toe in the water, check out the Brand Book Tutorial Series available here, on this blog.

As a consumer, having seen the video, I have to decide where my values around food production lie — and if based on those values, I choose to change my food buying behavior and start (or continue) buying from Chipotle. You have to make the same decision.

So what’s it going to be?

• The differences between advertising and branding.
• Why branding matters to businesses of all sizes – from solo-preneurs to small businesses, mid-sized businesses and large businesses.
• And how everyone can improve their brand position by utilizing the 10 exercises in Finding Brand: The Brand Book Tutorial.
• We even managed to talk about Kmart’s commercial, “Ship My Pants” Geiko’s Gecko, and Nike’s all-powerful swoosh.
• Not to mention, where Bill was going to have dinner tonight…and how all of that relates to branding.

If you weren’t able to tune in, you can listen to the interview below. And if you don’t have your own copy of Finding Brand yet, head on over to Amazon to start improving your brand today!

Branding! Everyone has heard the term, not everyone knows what it specifically means. Now those who do no know, have a ready reference in a work by Tisha Oehmen of Eagle Point.

Finding Brand is a work that has spanned the last couple of years, but is the life work of Oehmen, partner in Paradux Media Group, also of Eagle Point. In a few short words, branding is the essence of the owner and the company they have created. Oehmen points out that branding is more than personality, but it is personality, along with the business image that is portrayed, the “thing” that people see when they look at your company. [Read More].

Check out the PDF version of the article here.

You’ve come to know and appreciate the brand book tutorial on this blog, but this book takes all the lessons and expands the tutorial series to include more background and discussion, more branding elements, and examples from real company brand books to illustrate each section. In the book, you’ll learn:

• How to Write a Brand Narrative
• How to Create a Brand Perceptual Map
• How to Choose Brand Keywords
• How to Identify Brand Essence
• How to Articulate Brand Personality
• How to Share Brand Values
• What a Brand Manifesto and how to write it
• How to Incorporate Your Brand Tagline
• How to Listen for Brand Voice
• How to Codify Brand Rules

At the conclusion of the book, you’ll even find Rubber Duckie’s Complete Brand Book. So you can see how each of the exercises translates into a completed brand book.

I think that the best part of this book is that while it is very helpful for marketers looking for “How to Write a Brand Book”, its also helpful for those small to mid-size businesses that want to lay a great foundation for their future. Because in order to write a brand book, you have to first understand your brand. That’s where this book can help.

Regardless of where you fall on the branding spectrum, I hope you take the time to invest in your brand’s future and to spend some quality time working on (and with) it. Your brand is being defined — with or without you. And it could be so much better with you. To get your own copy of Finding Brand: The Brand Book Tutorial, just click the link or head on over to Amazon.com.

• Maria Sharapova is apparently considering legally changing her name to be Maria Sugarpova for the duration of the U.S. Open to bring attention to her candy line, Sugarpova. (The Guardian)
• AirAsia Japan is changing their name to Vanilla Air. (Economic Times)

Sharapova’s Sugarpova is a PR Stunt

In Maria Sharapova’s case, she’s built her reputation and fortune on the name Sharapova. But as key stakeholder in the Sugarpova candy line, even the reports that she is considering changing her name (just for the U.S. Open) is bringing untold visibility and press to the Sugarpova business. Whether or not she actually completes the name change is irrelevant. This is a PR stunt — and it’s working. The world-wide press is talking, and she doesn’t need to be introduced at the U.S. Open as Ms. Sugarpova to have successfully promoted the new business.

The Wisdom of Vanilla Air?

Certainly, in the West, the word vanilla has connotation that will be quite difficult to overcome. The Inquirer reported: “We chose vanilla as our brand name because it is popular and loved by everyone in the world,” the airline’s president Tomonori Ishii told a news conference in Tokyo. “I think it is a very cute name.” Cute it maybe, and it’s certainly true that most everyone likes vanilla, but still Vanilla Air seems decidedly  — well, vanilla.

Interestingly, there are a number of other budget airlines with food based names: Mango Airlines SOC Ltd. in South Africa,  and SpiceJet Ltd. in India, and ANA owned Peach Aviation. (Japan Times). This seems strange as in the intellectual space for budget airline, the single most important brand attribute for a budget airline is arguably the ability for the passenger to arrive safely at their destination.

It would seem that there surely was a better choice among the 200+ names considered, but at the end of the day, a name is just a name. It’s the surrounding branding that goes into it that will determine the relative success (or failure) of the brand. Okay, well that and their safety record.

What do you think? Are Sugarpova and Vanilla Air smart branding moves? Or a little to saccharine and ill considered for true success?

We all know advertising (and branding) used to be easier. There were silver bullets. There were guaranteed formulas that could be executed to drive business through the door. Unfortunately, those days are long gone. The world has changed.

The reason is that there are so very many different ways to communicate with customers. And customers have so many different choices of the media they will consume. Here is just a sampling of what you already know:

• Newspapers are out, and the Internet is in.
• Social Clubs are out, Social Media is in.
• Radio is out, Streaming is in.
• Television is out, TiVo is in.
• Movies are out Blu Ray and Streaming are in.
• Magazines are out, Blogs are in.
• Direct Mail is out, Email is in.

The world has gotten more complicated and today, the only common denominator for reaching customers is that there is NO common denominator. The end result is that successful businesses have to be very good at presenting themselves in a consistent and reliable manner across all channels of communication, all the time. By paying close attention to the consistency of a company’s message, that company can create and extend their brand.

Few businesses have the resources to be able to spend large quantities of money to dominate and saturate a given media channel. This ups the ante on the need for consistency for businesses of all sizes. The more consistent a business is about how they present themselves, the more successful they will be. If a company can create likeability and consistency, whether you’re fast forwarding through their commercial on TiVo, listening to their commercial on Pandora, seeing their product highlighted in a blog giveaway, or hosting a conversation on Facebook, that company can begin to win brand loyalty.

So yes, branding in a Multi-Media world is more complicated. There are far, FAR, more moving parts.

Nevertheless, the result is the same. Consistency leads to likeability. Likeability leads to loyalty. And that’s called BRANDING. Yesterday and today. Happily that rule hasn’t changed.

If you’ve been following the blog for any length of time, you can imagine how the conversation ensued, but, I can see this person’s point, it’s just that they missed the real reason that branding matters for businesses of all sizes. While a happy outcome of branding might be attaining a household name a la Sony or Apple, the real benefit of branding is efficiency… efficiency with time, money, action, and effort. Jeffrey Harmon from  Orabrush explains it this way: “Attention is a scarce resource. Branding is the experience marketers create to win that attention.”

While we often get wrapped up in the marketing elements of a brand (logo, tagline, etc), the most important elements of the brand is consistency. Sergio Zyman, Author of The End of Advertising As We Know It, suggests that, “A brand is essentially a container for a customer’s complete experience with the product or company.” And so it follows that a consistent representation of that business across the complete swath of a customer’s experience will make the business more memorable.

Every business (and person) has a brand, whether they intend to have one or not. Small businesses need to pay just as much attention (if not more) to every aspect of the way they interact with their customers as the large brands do. After all, small businesses have to stretch word-of-mouth as far as it can go, stretch marketing dollars to their limit, and can’t afford to throw money away on frivolous marketing opportunities. For medium-sized business, the stakes are even higher. Mid-sized businesses have the real opportunity, with a great brand, to create top of mind awareness, and achieve household-name status within their geographic region. And that benefit is equally as powerful as benefits large businesses receive from good branding. And of course, large-business has the potential for real payoffs with a great brand on a National and International scale.

At the end of the day, branding is about consistency, it’s about efficient use of resources that leverage each other to achieve a 1 + 1 = 3 affect. And what business couldn’t use that? Size doesn’t matter, BRAND does.

• Who is your best client, male or female? – female.
• How old is she? – 37 years old.
• What’s her name? –  we’ll call her Mary.
• What’s she look like? – Happy, content. About 5’6″, dimples
• Did Mary go to college? – Yes.
• Does she have a degree? – Yes a Masters.
• Does she work? – Yes, a professional-type job, she’s a dentist.
• Is Mary married? – Yes, to John.
• How about John, did he go to college? – Yes, got a Bachelors.
• What kind of job does John have? – a professional/white collar job.
• How about kids, does Mary have kids? – yes one, a little girl.
• How old are they? – Samantha’s just 1 year old.
• What does Mary do when she’s not at work? – she spends time working on her home, she likes it to be beautiful, but not fussy. She’s pretty pragmatic about things, she’d like to leave the world a better place for Samantha, but she’s also knows she’s short on time and has to make choices about which battles to fight.
• What else does Mary like to do? – she enjoys concerts, and an occasional trip to the theater. Mostly she likes watching Samantha experience the world for the first time.
• How about her marriage, is it happy? – yes, quite. Although both Mary & John are so busy with their jobs and Samantha that they don’t often get to spend time with each other, they’re looking forward to being able to spend more time in the future.

You see where this is going…we’re making Mary REAL — and by extension, we’re making John and Samantha real too. And all we’re doing is getting really interested in who one of our target audience members might be.  Once we have a better understanding of who Mary is, we can begin to ask the big-money questions:

• So if Mary could walk into your store today, what would she like to see there?
• What would she buy?
• What would she miss?
• What would Mary love?
• What would Mary hate?
• What doesn’t Mary have an interest (or time) for?
• What would make Mary’s day?

Really putting yourself into Mary’s shoes will help you to identify those elements that you can modify to bring your brand experience closer to alignment with Mary’s needs. It also makes it a lot easier to consider new products (would Mary buy this?). And to consider new marketing strategies (Would Mary care about this?)

Invest the time to create a backstory for a member of your target audience. Once you have yours, ask your busines partner(s) to do the same. Understanding how differently (or the same) each of you see the target audience will help you to adjust your strategies to really intersect your target. (It also helps to make sure you’re working toward the same goal).

1.  Adage: Nobody Really Cares About Your Brand, by  Tom Denari – This is a bold, in-your-face discussion on what the average, everyday person probably really thinks (or doesn’t think) about your brand. It’s a great wakeup call for all marketers to get out of their offices and actually talk with their target audience.
2. Brand Strategy Insider: The Rising Value of Brands in the Digital Age by Greg Satell – This article is a great analysis of what it means to try to create a brand in this new digital age, online and off. The playing field has changed, and this post helps to frame that change.
3. BrandSavant: The Single Best Question You Can Ask Your Customers, Audience or Partners by Tom Webster – This post examines one question that we should all think on, spend time with, and develop a plan for. It’s an insightful and interesting way to think about branding.
4. ProBlogger: A Key to Building a Sustainable Online Personal Brand by Darren Rowse – While this post is written from the standpoint of managing a personal brand online, it’s lessons are applicable to corporate brands as well.
5. Inc.: The New Rules for Marketing by Geoffrey James – This post takes a hard look at the old marketing rules and the new marketing rules. No doubt about it, the world has changed.

What do you think? What have you read lately that has evolved (or confirmed) your thoughts on marketing in general, and Branding in particular? I’d love it if you could share at least one below.

My solution: Evernote. According to their website, Evernote’s proposition is threefold.

• Capture anything. Save your ideas, things you like, things you hear, and things you see.
• Access anywhere. Evernote works with nearly every computer, phone and mobile device out there.
• Find things fast. Search by keyword, tag or even printed and handwritten text inside images.

You’ve probably heard of Evernote, you may even use it. I know I had, and until recently used it intermittently, only to clip web pages that had bits of code I hoped to be able to find again at some point in the future. But this year, I discovered the real power of Evernote and its true power. And this was that moment…

My Evernote Ah Ha Moment

I have about 100 Brand Books from various companies in PDF form that I have collected. And every time I wanted to find an example of “Venn Diagrams” or “Manifesto” or “Brand Personality“, I had to open each and every Brand Book until I found the two or three examples that I could use to refer to. As you can imagine, this was tedious and time consuming. Of course I had a pretty good idea of the 10 or so that I regularly used, but sometimes, I want more variety. The answer? Evernote. Since Evernote can search within PDF documents (and Microsoft Documents), all I had to do is get the documents into Evernote. And it turns out, that you can setup your Evernote Desktop program to import a folder on your computer. So I simply setup a rule that any document in my Brand Book folder should be automatically imported into Evernote. Now all I have to do to find a Brand Book that references “Brand Keywords” is to open Evernote, go to my Brand Book folder and search for “Keywords.” Any Brand Book that contains the word “Keyword” will automatically appear. Then it’s just a matter of paging through the Brand Book to find the specific reference. This ensures that I can find all references, quickly and thoroughly.

Of course you probably don’t have about 100 Brand Books that you regularly search, but think about all those documents you do have, from your friends, colleagues, and co-workers, from bloggers you like to follow, and from all that internet content we are exposed to on a daily basis. You just have to get it into Evernote to harness the power of all that relevant and interesting data. And Evernote makes it so easy.

• Use Web Clipper, which simply sits in your browser and when you push it, sends the page you’re looking at to your Evernote account.
• Grab the mobile version for your smart phone and you can take pictures of documents you just received in a meeting and send them to your Evernote account — and the text in those images is SEARCHABLE!
• Check out Evernote Hello to take a picture of the business card you just received (and have it send the picture of the card to Evernote, simultaneously scan the card for data, read the contact information from the card, go out to LinkedIn and look for a complete contact profile, AND load it into the contact list on your phone in under 30 seconds). WOW!
• Take handwritten notes on a regular-old-ordinary notepad during your meeting, and take a picture of those notes with your Evernote App on your smart phone and… you guessed it, the image is sent to Evernote and yes, it’s searchable. (Even bad handwriting is inexplicably searchable–it’s miraculous really.)
• Powerbot Apps makes a little program that sits inside your email client (Google Apps/Gmail or Outlook) and gives you a button that allows you to send that email directly to your Evernote account.
• And for that Google Reader replacement? I’m liking Feedly a lot, but they don’t have an integrated conduit to Evernote (yet–one can hope). But they do have the ability to send the post by email, and the ability to specify an autopopulated bcc. All I had to do is load my Evernote email address (yep, you get a private address to email directly to your Evernote account) in as the automatic bcc on any email sent. Then if I find an article I want to keep tabs on, I click the email button and “send”, it automatically goes to my account.
• Want more? Want to see some really interesting integrations? Check out IFTTT for Evernote uses that may spark your imagination.

Now here’s the real killer-app element….you can access all your Evernote notes, wherever you are. On your mobile phone, on your computer, on the internet, on your tablet…well you get the idea. It’s all instantly accessible. 

Evernote: The Killer-App for Marketing and Beyond

As you can see the opportunity to become a marketing super-star is palpable with the power of Evernote. All your research, all your meetings, all your contacts, ((all your starred items from Google Reader)), and all the content you come across on a daily basis, at your fingertips. Plus, if you’ve got Evernote Web Clipper enabled in your browser, those documents searched and returned to you every time you open Google to search for anything. That’s powerful.

Of course, Evernote only gets better as you expand its use beyond your Marketing life and into every aspect of your life. All the same principles that work for Marketing documents also work for Recipes, Thank You notes, scribbled bits of paper that you need to keep, your diary, etc., etc., etc. The possibilities are literally endless.

So, do you use Evernote? How do you use it? What are your favorite apps for expanding its features? Please share your thoughts below!

Many business owners spend in ordinate amounts of time ensuring that they are the legal owner of an idea (patent), the legal owner of their logo (trademark), the legal owner of their business space, equipment, etc. Yet, for one of the most valuable assets any business holds, they turn the purchase of it over to someone else and then never bother to get the account credentials and legal ownership of the domain name.

I’m willing to bet that nearly 90% of those of you reading this post — who have a website, can’t tell me right now who the legal owner of your domain name is. And what is particularly sad, 75% of those ARE NOT THE LEGAL OWNER.

Ready to find out if you’re the legal owner? It’s easy to check, just go to your favorite domain provider (or click here) and put in your domain name. Once you decode the ever-exciting human-proving captcha, you’ll see a page that looks much like the image to the right. What you’re looking for is the “Registrant.” If you are not listed as the registrant, you are NOT the legal owner of the domain. It needs to not only display your name (or your company’s name) but also your contact information in this area.

This means that whoever is listed as the registrant is the person or company that can determine what website displays at the address, how your email addresses behave, and whether you ever get the opportunity to make any of those choices about that domain name ever again.

If you are listed as the Registrant and your contact information is available — you can call the Registrar and (eventually) get complete control of the domain. If you are not listed — or your contact information is missing or wrong you have NO RIGHTS with regard to the domain. And you are dependent on the goodwill and availability of the person or company who is listed.

So, now that you’ve looked up the legal owner determined you’re not it…you’re probably wondering what to do. First things first, call the person or company listed as the Registrant and see what it will take for them to change the Registrant information to be you. AND while you’re at it, ask them to push the domain to an account that you can have the username and password to. Be kind, patient, and understanding — at least until you get control of the domain. Keep at it, owning your online presence is a fight worth fighting.

Umbrella Brand Architecture

Umbrella Brand Architecture is the most identifiable. It is one brand that creates a single powerful image, often paired with descriptive names for products, services, divisions, or locations. In this architecture, marketing is most efficient, offering economies of scale linked to the variety of products and markets that the brand covers. Put another way it allows “increase[d] advertising efficiency by providing an umbrella for several brands that reduces the need for separate brand budgets.”[i]  One brand, one unified effort, all money and energy expended strengthen the whole brand. In this type of architecture, reputation is linked inextricably with size and power. “Masterbrands are a company-wide brand force, composed of a central set of associated meanings and benefits, whose scope stretches from the company’s strategic core, throughout its people and partners, enveloping its customers, and beyond to its outer perimeter of influence.”[ii]

Product Brand Architecture

Product Brand Architecture is favored by decentralized companies targeting diverse markets. This architecture makes sense when the sub-brands have distinct markets that are not directly related to each other. This style of brand architecture is the most costly, in both time and money, to execute for the parent brand. In a limited resources situation, it is also the least effective. These brands are separately run, ideologically disparate, and often compete against each other for internal and external visibility as well as market share.

The Best Brand Architecture?

Which is right for your company? The answer is … it depends. It depends on your goals, on your market, and on your business itself. But it should be a choice, not an accident. So consider your options and make your choice.

I can’t do anything about the overseas spam. But, there is a class of email spam that is worse in my opinion. That’s the local business, unscrupulous add-me-to-their-list move. I can’t count the number of times someone has attended a meeting I regularly attend, as a guest, and collected business cards from everyone at the meeting. Then, miraculously, the following day I (and everyone else) receives the first of that company’s email newsletters. Not an invitation to connect. Not an invitation to receive their newsletter — their actual newsletter, they actually subscribed me to their email newsletter list. In that moment in which I received that first email, two things happen in my world.

1. My regard for their business practices plummeted through the floor. After all, attending the same meeting I attended did not give that person the right to spam me with their email news. While I might have been interested in the product/service that they sold before — there is absolutely no way I would ever try that product/service.  As if that wasn’t enough, I have to assume that their business practices are more than shady if they subscribe me to their list without ever asking…what else will they do with my information? In my opinion, subscribing me to their email list without my request or permission is a non-starter. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, and definitely do not collect my business…ever.
2. I take a significant amount of glee in unsubscribing from the list and reporting to the email list manager the fact that I never subscribed to the list. If you’ve ever tried to build a legitimate double-opt-in email list, you know that most legitimate email list managers take their requirements for double-opt-in seriously. And with good reason. The more individuals who report a email list manager as spam tolerant, the more difficult it is for their legitimate email clients to get through to their client’s email boxes. Some email list managers, Mailchimp for example, enforce a strict 1 abuse complaint per 1000 email sent. You get two warnings — and then you’re done. Period. So by taking the added step of reporting the fact that I never subscribed to the list, I’m helping them to have to find a new email list manager….my own special gift of thanks for failing to ask me to join their list.

Now don’t get me wrong — I am on A LOT of email lists. I get lots of newsletters in my inbox everyday. But I asked for them, I put my name and email address in the form AND pressed the “I really want to subscribe” button on the email that came. And that’s the key. I want the information they are providing me. I think highly of the brands that offer me information I need/want free of charge. I appreciate the ability to receive their information in my inbox. My regard for their brand goes UP.

The moral of the story…take the time to build a legitimate double-opt-in list. It will enhance your brand reputation. You know you’ll be talking to folks who actually want to hear what you have to say AND who might be interested in what you’re selling.

Oh, and don’t bother subscribing me to your list if I haven’t asked to be there — it won’t help you one iota, and I might just be the one to get you kicked off your current email list manager.

What is a Brand Book?

All of these are legitimate questions that many marketers struggle with. At its core, a Brand Book is an integral element of a well-functioning brand. It’s about articulating the elements of your brand concisely and consistently. It is written for two audiences: internal stakeholders and marketing partners. The Brand Book has some beneficial outcomes for businesses that use it.

Brand Books come in all shapes and sizes. You will hear them called names: Brand Book, Brand Guidelines, Corporate Identity Guidelines, Brand Bible, etc. The bottom line is that these documents serve the following purposes for your business:

Your Brand Book Will…

1. Crystallize your brand position.
2. Add depth and resonance to your brand position by ensuring its alignment with your business strategy.
3. Get (and keep) your entire team on message.
4. Help to save time by not reinventing the wheel.
5. Save your business money because your brand is consistently being displayed.

While it is true that a Brand Book can be tedious and painful to put together, the benefits of having one usually outweigh the cost of creating one. The work that goes into making a Brand Book is rewarding and illuminating. This is WHY you need a Brand Book for your business.

Writing a Brand Book

You do not have to hire a professional to write your own Brand Book. It would benefit YOU a lot if you do it for your brand. Check out the Brand Book Tutorial on the Finding Brand Blog for step-by-step instructions. This FREE series will walk you through the exercises necessary to craft your brand book. You choose your pace and work on your brand, and in the end, you can reap all the rewards that having a brand book can bring. Click here to get started now.

See More From the Brand Book Tutorial Series

Does Your Brand Have a Brand Book?

Read More about Does Your Brand Have a Brand Book?

The Heavens Parted and Delivered the Brand Book

Read More about The Heavens Parted and Delivered the Brand Book

Brand History: Start at the Beginning of the Brand Book

Read More about Brand History: Start at the Beginning of the Brand Book

Identify Your Brand Position by Using Brand Keywords

Read More about Identify Your Brand Position by Using Brand Keywords

Identify Your Brand Essence

Read More about Identify Your Brand Essence

What’s the Difference: Brand Book vs. Brand Guidelines vs. Brand Bible vs. Identity Guidelines

Read More about What’s the Difference: Brand Book vs. Brand Guidelines vs. Brand Bible vs. Identity Guidelines

Articulate the Brand Personality for the Brand Book

Read More about Articulate the Brand Personality for the Brand Book

Writing the Brand Manifesto and Brand Tagline for the Brand Book

Read More about Writing the Brand Manifesto and Brand Tagline for the Brand Book

Brand Book Rules (or brand dos and don’ts)

Read More about Brand Book Rules (or brand dos and don’ts)

The Power of the Brand Narrative in the Brand Book

Read More about The Power of the Brand Narrative in the Brand Book

Definition of a Manifesto

For those of you who may not have been following along, a manifesto is a tool that you use internally, to motivate, to inspire, and to provide richness and meaning to the tagline. It is the backstory. It is NOT politically correct. It is never going to hang in the Board Room. At its best, it is raw, pound-on-the-table, and raise-the-hair-on-your-arms. If you do not feel “charged” as you are reading the manifesto aloud, you have not put enough truth in it.

The Power of a Manifesto

Think about the power that could belong to your “Declaration of Passion.” It is a declaration of what your business is passionate about, why your business exists, and what your business stands for. It has the power to capture the lightning bolt that is the reason your business exists, and drive all the energy and power deep into the culture and every fiber of your business. It provides the backstory for the tagline and most importantly, it provides context for the employees. It allows the reader to recruit themselves to your team and, through the employee’s passion, to recruit customers to your business. As if that was not enough, the manifesto also immediately shifts the reader to the mindset of the brand and allows the active reader to channel the brand and to become an extension of the brand position.

If you do not have your own Declaration of Passion, check out this post to learn about how to create your own Declaration of Passion.

Top 3 Reasons to Hire a Creative Ad Agency

1. The Creative Ad Agency Knows Their Craft. Let’s face it. You probably wouldn’t choose to perform major surgery on yourself — even if you could. You want a surgeon that has additional knowledge and skills beyond that which you possess (unless you, yourself are a surgeon.) The same is true for a creative ad agency. They have additional knowledge and skills about the most effective and efficient ways to present your business to the world. While a lot of it can be as mysterious as the inner workings of our bodies the reality is that a creative ad agency can, and will, bring expert advice to the table to help you achieve your goals. The creative ad agency knows how to best to display your business, where the most effective advertising opportunities are for your business, how to position your business for maximum effectiveness, and how to reap economies of scale.
2. A Creative Ad Agency Will Save You Time and Money. A creative ad agency will help you to make smart choices on the very best combination of services to meet your marketing needs. Operating within your marketing budget, the creative ad agency will help you set a strategy, leverage your visibility, and help to ensure that everything you do is advancing your whole image and making the most out of every dollar you spend and minute you invest. Creative ad agencies know where the best printing deals are, what radio ads on a given station should cost, how to maximize online advertising dollars, and what visibility/seo options are worth pursing – and which are not. Let’s face it, you know where to find the highest quality and lowest price for the products you sell and the services you provide on a regular basis — so does a creative ad agency.
3. A Creative Ad Agency Can Provide Strategic Help and Guidance. When you need someone to help you get up above the chaos of the day to day, your creative ad agency can help. In most cases, a creative ad agency works with a variety of industries and can offer ideas and feedback on what is currently working for other businesses. They also tend not to get sucked into the day to day work that often consumes small and mid-sized business owners. They also are used to functioning on a quarterly and annual schedule instead of hour to hour. All of these things make them the ideal strategic partner for your business to think strategically about where you are going and why.

A Common Misconception About Working with a Creative Ad Agency

One common misconception about working with a creative ad agency is that they are very expensive and/or only for those with large discretionary marketing budgets. This is usually untrue. While some agencies do have minimum spending thresholds for clients, not all do. And regardless of the amount you spend on a monthly basis, your advertising can be improved by working with an agency. Usually,  a creative ad agency will place media buys for the standard 15% discounted offered by the media themselves. Functionally, this means you don’t have to pay anything “extra” for that expertise.

If you are interested in finding out how to take the next step to work with a creative ad agency, please schedule a free consultation with me. There’s no obligation, just a frank discussion of your business needs and the most efficient way to get there.

Getting your hands around a company’s marketing expenses isn’t easy. And that’s only the first step. The second step is determining how much you intend to spend on your marketing budget during the course of the year. And the third step is making the best choices within the marketing budget to leverage against each other, giving you a 1 + 1 = 3 effect.

Current Marketing Budget

First things first, you need to know what you’re spending on your marketing expenses during the course of the year. To really get your hands around the complete picture, you should consider expenses in the following areas:

• Media Purchases (money spent buying time/space.)
• Media Production (money spent producing creative for the Media Purchase.)
• Directory Listings (money spent inserting your business in online and offline/paper directories.)
• Corporate Identity (money spent on creating your official business identity.)
• Associations/Organizations (money spent on your professional and civic affiliations.)
• Charitable Contributions (money spent on visible charitable sponsorships)
• Marketing Consultants (money spent with consultants/experts on marketing.)

It’s hard to think comprehensively about all the different aspects of marketing that are associated with each of these areas. To that end, we have developed a marketing budget template that we share with clients to help them completely evaluate their current marketing expense level.

This template is available to subscribers of the Finding Brand Blog (look in the right column of the email you are reading this post on for the download) — if you’re not one, it’s OK, you can subscribe and I’ll send you the Marketing Budget Template instantly and FREE of charge. As a member of the Finding Brand community, you’ll receive all the Finding Brand posts in your inbox, so you’ll never miss a post. And of course, you’ll also receive subscriber-only benefits (like this one.)

Determine What Your Marketing Budget Should Be

The question,  “what should be spent on marketing?” is a tough one. And, there is no easy answer. However there are some good guidelines out there. Most commonly the marketing budget is expressed as a percentage of GROSS Income (receipts and gains from all sources less cost of goods sold). The exact percentage that should be spent varies, usually between 3% and 15%. But where on that marketing budget percentage your business should fall is a function of a number of conditions. And this is where it gets a little subjective. Because the marketing budget needs to be set according to a wide variety of factors including: competition, brand recognition, your town/city, number of locations, number of employees, whether you are a B2B or B2C business, selling a service, commodity, or luxury good.

The Houston Chronicle  reported that, “The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends spending 7 to 8 percent of your gross revenue for marketing and advertising if you’re doing less than $5 million a year in sales and your net profit margin — after all expenses — is in the 10 percent to 12 percent range. Some marketing experts advise that start-up and small businesses usually allocate between 2 and 3 percent of revenue for marketing and advertising, and up to 20 percent if you’re in a competitive industry. Still other marketing experts counsel a range between 1 percent and 10 percent, and even more depending on how long you’ve been in business, competitive activity and what you can afford.”

7 percent is an appropriate place to start for most small to mid-sized businesses. From there, you’ll need to adjust upward for infrequency of purchase. The less often someone makes the buying decision for your specific product or service, the more you have to spend on marketing and advertising. If you have a business that employs less than 100 employees, you will also have to adjust your percentage upward more significantly to compensate for the smaller impact your business has on your community (see the Marketing Sherpa graph to the right for more information.)

We usually see serious small businesses spending 7-12% of their gross income on their marketing budgets annually. Of course, this is often tempered by what the business can afford to spend on their marketing, and as you’ll see on the Marketing Budget Template – it’s not all hard costs, we should account for soft costs (time) in our Marketing Budget.

Leveraging Your Marketing Budget

Once you have determined what you are spending, and what you should be spending, it is time to evaluate where the money is being spent and how it could be more effectively spent. First you have to decide what marketing dollars are helping, and which are stagnating (eliminate those that are stagnating). Be ruthless here, and evaluate whether what you are deploying your marketing budget in strategic/thoughtful campaigns or fits and starts (eliminate the fits and starts in favor of strategy). This will help you to spend smarter and to make better use of your money, time, and energy.

Help with Your Marketing Budget Template

If you need help and ideas about how to build consistency, please check out my blog on the topic. Of course, this is also where a professional marketing consultant can help, and I’d be glad to lend some insights and guidance, please schedule a FREE consultation with me to discuss your unique situation.

5 Brand Logo Questions

1. Is your brand logo embarrassing? What I mean here is, did someone fail to see what it really looks like before going live with it? For instance, did you put a sperm on your shoe and then try to argue it was intentional? “Our logo is deliberate. Our customers feel like they are getting the beginning of a new life when they try our shoes,” said Alexander Elnekaveh, CEO of Gravity Defyer. It’s time to change the logo (FYI the shoe company, Gravity Defyer already did.)
2. Is your brand logo an accurate representation of your brand? Do you have a childish-looking brand logo but a serious brand? How about a serious logo and a childish brand logo? If your brand logo doesn’t match the current tenor of your business, it’s time to evolve your brand logo.
3.  Is your brand logo dated? No really — is it out of date? Does your brand logo rely on out-of-date colors like teal and mauve? Does it scream 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s? Is that appropriate for your brand position? If not — it’s time for an evolution of your brand logo. 
4. Has your brand logo been involved in a scandal? If so it’s time to rethink it. People are inherently resistant to change, but there comes a point when its no longer just change and it’s a problem. Ask Gap when that happened — and don’t follow them down the path, it’s just not worth it.
5. Does it represent your business today? Look, businesses change, it’s a fact of life. And for that reason, sometimes brand logos have to change too. Brand logos need to fully represent their business. When they don’t, it’s time for them to change.

Bonus 6th Brand Logo Question

Here’s the magic 6th question — are you just tired of your logo? If the answer to this question is “yes” – then it’s time to rethink the brand logo change question. Naturally, you’re going to get tired of your logo first — you have the most contact with it. Try to remember that the next time you look at your logo. Sometimes the old logo is the best logo you can have.  It may be just gathering visibility, recognition, and top of mind awareness. Switching out your logo can mean that you give up all that traction. Changing your brand logo is most definitely NOT something that should be undertaken lightly.

So, did you answer yes to any of the first 5 brand logo questions? If so — it might be time for a new logo. But, if you answered “yes” to the 6th question — think long and hard about whether you are making the decision for business, or for your own personal edification. Because if it’s the latter — you’ll be hurting your brand.

Again this year, the Brand Book Tutorial Series found a significant following among Finding Brand readers (in fact, it makes up 8 of the 10 posts!). Since the Brand Book Tutorial dominated the top 10, I included the top 15 posts in this list – just for those of you who wanted to see what else is popular on the blog.

So here they are, the top 15 posts from the Finding Brand Blog in 2012! Thank you all for making the Finding Brand blog so popular!

1. What’s the Difference? Brand Book, Brand Guidelines, Brand Bible, and Identity Guidelines
2. Articulate the Brand Personality for the Brand Book
3. 5 Businesses that Should NOT be on Social Media
4. Does Your Brand have a Brand Book?
5. Writing the Brand Manifesto and Tagline for the Brand Book
6. 5 Marketing Lessons Derived from KONY 2012
7. Start at the Beginning of the Brand Book
8. Venn Diagram for the Brand Book
9. Brand Book Rules (or brand dos and don’ts)
10. Keywords for Your Brand’s Position
11. The One Marketing Tool You Can’t Afford to Live Without
12. Annual Strategic Marketing Plan Template
13. Your Brand is About Emotion
14. Examining Your Marketing Environment
15. How are You Better than Your Competition?

It appears, many of you come to this blog for the science of marketing and advertising, with the Strategic Marketing Plan Effectiveness series coming in a close second to the Brand Book Tutorial series. I’ll try to provide you more of those types of posts throughout 2013.  (As always, if you have specific topic requests, please leave them in the comments area below.)

“Every corporate brand has its story. Because stories are such potent communication tools, telling the story of the business brand can be a significant way to relate the company to its stakeholders.” (Hatch & Schultz, 2003). With a consistent and compelling brand narrative, employees become ambassadors for your brand and products; stakeholders promote them, earned media becomes more accessible to earn, and, perhaps most importantly, you can create buzz within the industry and target audiences. And it’s as easy as telling a story.

Brand Building Strategy

A simple way to think of your brand is to understand that it is the story of your business. Storytelling branding is about the history of your business, it’s about you as a protagonist, it’s about the evils you battle in this world, and it’s about the gang of people you hang out with and why. How you tell and retell this story defines what your business is, as telling yourself will help make it so. We all live our stories – and your business is no different.

American Heart Association/ American Stroke Association branding Guidelines.

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association included a brief story about their brand in their brand book. It covers their unique story and their reason for being. It sets the tone for the rest of their brand book. In a short paragraph, explain where they have been and where they are going.

The story of Skype, however, clearly articulates its history and unique position while also introducing the reader to its unique brand voice, which is casual, humorous, enlightened, and utterly entirely Skype’s own.

When you’re thinking about creating your brand book, focus on what the story of your business is. What is the excellent journey your business is undertaking? What are the exciting details of the story? Why is the world better because your company came along?

The World According to Skype. Skype.

See More From the Brand Book Tutorial Series

Does Your Brand Have a Brand Book?

Read More about Does Your Brand Have a Brand Book?

The Heavens Parted and Delivered the Brand Book

Read More about The Heavens Parted and Delivered the Brand Book

Brand History: Start at the Beginning of the Brand Book

Read More about Brand History: Start at the Beginning of the Brand Book

Identify Your Brand Position by Using Brand Keywords

Read More about Identify Your Brand Position by Using Brand Keywords

Identify Your Brand Essence

Read More about Identify Your Brand Essence

What’s the Difference: Brand Book vs. Brand Guidelines vs. Brand Bible vs. Identity Guidelines

Read More about What’s the Difference: Brand Book vs. Brand Guidelines vs. Brand Bible vs. Identity Guidelines

Articulate the Brand Personality for the Brand Book

Read More about Articulate the Brand Personality for the Brand Book

Writing the Brand Manifesto and Brand Tagline for the Brand Book

Read More about Writing the Brand Manifesto and Brand Tagline for the Brand Book

Brand Book Rules (or brand dos and don’ts)

Read More about Brand Book Rules (or brand dos and don’ts)

What is a Brand Book?

Read More about What is a Brand Book?

Strategic Marketing Vision Leads to Success

To be successful in marketing means that we have to have vision and foresight, where others may come up short. The best marketing professionals have strategic marketing vision, the ability to take an abstract concept and see it clearly enough that they can imagine a concrete product, fully manifest. The nebulous product idea has to become “real enough” to a marketing professional that we can imagine it in use, know who it will have appeal to, who will be the early adopters, and envision it fully implemented in everyday life.

In short, we have to see it BEFORE anyone else can. But dreaming alone isn’t sufficient either. As marketing professionals, we have to also be individuals of action: establishing plans, publicity, and sales channels, all before it’s actually real. True marketing takes place in those moments of strategic marketing vision.

To really be able to see the strategic marketing vision is often a talent marketers are born with. But it is also a skill that can be honed to ever-greater degrees of refinement.

Enhance Your Strategic Marketing Vision

One of the best ways to enhance your strategic marketing vision is to focus on to seeing farther. To understand what’s happening in the world, helps you to understand what’s happening for your product. To do this, check out futuring sites and pay attention to their findings. (The World Future Society, for instance.) These sites will help you understand the larger context and to frame future trends.

But most of all, you have to contemplate, as Laurens Van der Post artfully describes it:

“The not-yet in the now, the taste of fruit that does not-yet exist,
hanging the blossom on the bough.”
~Laurens Van der Post

To enhance your strategic marketing vision, you have to pay close attention to that “not-yet in the now”. To take Mr. Van der Post’s analogy, we have to extrapolate from that moment when you first notice the cherry blossom on branch, and know that your marketable product, cherries, will appear in just a few short weeks. You have to be able to look at the blossoms and actually taste the cherries. You have to know that they will make an outstanding pie, and that the person(s) you need to be able to sell them to will want to create that pie. You have to understand that to reach the piemaker, you’re going to have to have a message that triggers memories of the most amazing pie they’ve ever had. That the piemaker will frequent fruit stands in the upcoming months, looking for fruit worthy of their pie. And that the piemaker will be plugged into the local Master Gardener’s group in an attempt to source the very best fruit. Finally, your strategic marketing vision will tell you that you will need to advertise in the Master Gardener’s summer issue with an ad promoting cherries for the most luscious pie ever made. That’s what the “not-yet in the now” means. It’s your strategic marketing vision painting the future.

No question, strategic marketing vision takes practice, but if you’re willing, and paying attention, you will be able to create a promotion plan, to buy media, and to create advertisements that will sell those cherries at a premium, when there is no more evidence of their arrival than flowers on a branch. So pay attention to those moments of the not-yet in the now and practice extrapolating your marketing plan, continually doing so will improve your strategic marketing vision.

5 Must Dos for a Brand Manager

A Brand Manager Guards the Brand

This is the big one. It’s your job to ensure that everything…every printed piece, every advertisement, every TV ad, every tweet, and every interaction is on brand. If you’re not holding firm on that, then you can be sure that no one else is either. Be sure to protect your brand from bad press. Look hard at everything your company does, says, and produces.

A Brand Manager Ensures Consistency

Your brand has to be consistent. This means that as Brand Manager, you have to hold the line and make sure that everything you do is steady and consistent with everything else you’re doing. A prime example of a Brand Manager who was not paying attention occurred recently with McDonald’s. Have you seen the “Champions of Happy, Goat” Commercial? (below)

This commercial is not anywhere near any of the rest of the brand for McDonalds.  Now, McDonalds obviously has money to throw around on ineffectual and poor marketing choices that dilute their brand, but I’m betting your company doesn’t. As Brand Manager, it’s your job to make sure this doesn’t happen.

A Brand Manager Focuses on One Thing

Scope Creep happens. It happens when we decide that we really like standing for X when traditionally, we’ve stood for Y. And after all, no one is standing for X right now, so the logic goes — why don’t we stand for X AND Y? The problem here is that when you stand for more than one thing — you stand for NOTHING! So pick one thing, stand for it, and let the rest of it go.

A Brand Manager Promotes the Brand

You can’t have a great brand if no one knows about it. Figure out what you can afford to spend on a monthly basis promoting your brand, choose the very best medium to promote it and get busy with your promotion. Take the time to make a plan, and stick with it.

A Brand Manager Makes a Strategic Plan for the Brand

I know, planning isn’t at the top of everyone’s list — but it doesn’t have to take forever and it will save you time in the long run. I’ve previously outlined how to write a strategic marketing plan. Re-read the post and download the free template if you’re having trouble getting started.

Sounds easy enough right? Being a Brand Manager isn’t an easy job — but if you diligently work on these 5 must dos, you’ll be well on your way to creating a successful, well-known brand that makes your company money. And that’s what we’re all after right?

You’ve probably been hearing, or witnessing,the differences between Les Mis the movie and Les Mis the live show. And I’d be willing to bet that most everyone who has seen it live will recommend the live version — it’s truly something special. But many will also say that the movie is also good. Good — not great. The difference (besides a Javert who can be the appropriate foil to Jean Valjean) is the experience of the live show. (Carmen Voilleque does a great job of articulating this in her recent blog post.) But most of all, it’s special. What you see live can never be exactly replicated, by it’s very nature — it’s remarkably special, and the audience is in on it.

And as true as that is for Les Mis — it’s doubly true for your brand. Allowing your audience to be “part of it,” to be part of the thing that is unique and special will only solidify your brand image. But you don’t get the opportunity to produce a “live show” on a daily basis like they do on Broadway. You have have to invent ways that allow your audience — customers, stakeholders, the opportunity to become part of it.

You can do this any number of ways, but by far the easiest is with your social media accounts. Use these to create transparency between you and the audience. Let them see behind the curtain, to be a part of your company. If you let them in — you’ll find you help them to become part of the story, effectively enlisting them as part of your audience during the live show. The lift you can get from allowing them in is both substantial and profitable.

And if you’ve never seen Les Mis live — look for it at the next opportunity.

Marketing Techniques to Watch For

• Sales – you’re going to be seeing lots of sales going on this time of year. Why? Well first this marketing technique creates a sense of urgency. By their very definition, a sale is a limited time offer. No where is this more evident than on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Shop Local Saturday. Particularly on Black Friday, people get up abnormally early, endure a huge crush of people to buy a product on an unprecedented price for just a few short hours. Now what’s interesting about Black Friday is that in a significant number of cases, the individual is buying a specific product brand, only because it’s on sale. Talk about an effective marketing technique!
• Ads –  everywhere you turn. There is probably not a more significant and sustained advertising period for retail than the holiday season. This marketing technique is ideally suited for brand creation. The reason is quite simply that spreading the word about your product and increasing the number of individuals that know about it – will increase sales.
• Credible Reviews and Content Marketing – As consumers start trying to choose which product to purchase in a specific category, they are going to turn to their expert resources and the internet. Partnering with credible bloggers for candid reviews is a great marketing technique to spread the word about your product. You do have to be prepared for the good and the bad…but often for the price of a product for a drawing, bloggers will give you a good review.
• Good Works – although it works particularly well anytime of year, good works can be especially beneficial as a marketing technique this time of year. Combining your product with a feel-good charitable cause will help your brand to go farther faster this holiday season. Well, actually, just about anytime.

Brands are Built by Consistently and Strategically Repeated Marketing Techniques

The bottom line in building your brand’s reputation is that you will need to employ some or all of these marketing techniques over the life of your brand. But right now, with the holidays literally knocking on our door, this is a great time time to consider ways to create your brand and use some marketing techniques to create a boost in 2013.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, what many business owners are getting for their money isn’t a completely managed web hosting package. Sure, the website is up on a server, displaying to the world, however that’s about it. There is little to no optimization for loading speed, non-existent  brute force and malware injection monitoring. Limited to no backup service, and absolutely no plugin/theme/core upgrade service. (Did you know that if your website takes more than 7 seconds to load you will lose visitors and search engine ranking? Find out how fast your website is here.)

Worse yet, many business owners try their hand at self-hosting their own website to save costs. And while it’s true that technically anyone can host a website on a service like GoDaddy, what they are giving up is a technical understanding of the challenges that go into managed web hosting. The pitfalls, the secrets, and the necessary elements that go into facilitating the website hosting connection. In other words, keeping the website “up” and “running”. They’re trading a little cash for inconsistent backup schedules, intermittent upgrades (the SUREST way to make sure that your website invites malware), and for their own understanding of how to keep the website up and running.  What’s most worrying — we’re not talking about tech-savvy individuals or hobby sites. We’re talking about individuals who know nothing about hosting a website and the face your business shows the world.

What everyone wants/needs out of their business website is for it to be up, functioning, and free of malware. When it’s not, it’s a reflection on your business. And with all the time, energy, and money we spend each day trying to create a business with a solid reputation, your website should be helping — not hurting. There is a solution though…managed web hosting

Enter Managed Web Hosting

The good news is, for most websites using open source software (WordPress, for instance), there are choices in Managed Web Hosting. And there are GREAT hosts out there. Yes, it will cost you more than the bargain-basement providers, but remember, we’re not talking about a hobby website. We’re talking about your business website…one of the most important assets for your business. It’s your connection to your community, the world, and your next client. Rather than spend another penny on Yellow Pages advertising, spend the $50 a month that it will take to make sure your website is managed appropriately. That your website is a good representation of your business, and that you have a website hosting provider that will call you back in a timely manner. That your website is up, safe, backed up, and FAST. (Full disclosure: Paradux Media Group offers WordPress Managed Web Hosting for Businesses, but there are lots of great managed web hosting providers out there, do your research and choose well.)

What is Managed Web Hosting?

Managed Web Hosting occurs when you, the business owner, outsource the management and hosting of your website to a reputable business that takes care of the server setup, server management, website backups, website upgrades, defending against malware, and generally looking after all the technical aspects of your websites. In a managed web hosting situation, you have the freedom and ability to access and add content to your website, but you don’t have to worry about it being there when you want it. Managed web hosting provides the piece of mind that is critical for a business website.

Once you get control of your website with managed web hosting, you’ll be able to launch your latest campaign with your website, drive traffic to a landing page on the site, track your sale’s progress by tracking the hits to your landing page, and close the deal online — that’s smart and effective marketing.

In particular, three questions posed by Kumar can help any marketer to begin to think more broadly, which should reveal potential strategies for success  — and this is the time for it with Strategic Marketing Plans due shortly.

1. Are there customers who are either unhappy with all of the industry’s offerings or are not being served at all?
2. Can we offer a value proposition that delivers dramatically higher benefits or lower prices, compared with others in the industry?
3. Can we radically redefine the value network for the industry with much lower costs?

I recommend starting with question number one and working your way systematically through each question. But, if you can answer these three questions, you’ll find the soft spot in your marketing landscape which will allow you to arrange your Strategic Marketing Plan to leverage that opportunity for success.

The soft spot in the marketing landscape should reveal the next big opportunity to expand into by a business operating in your space — if it’s not you, it may well be a competitor or a new entrant to the marketplace. And while it may feel like there haven’t been many new entrants to the marketplace in your industry in the last few years, never fear, the economy will eventually turn around and there will be entrants who are willing and able to exploit these opportunities as the economy improves — it might as well be you.

Get going — make a plan and work moving your business actively into the future.