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There has been a lot of talk lately about authenticity and creating a story for your brand that resonates with people and gets them to connect with you on an emotional level. So, last night, my wife and I are talking about something and she says “Just like Wendy’s and Dave Thomas.” I ask her what she means and she goes on to explain that Wendy, the daughter of Dave Thomas (founder of Wendy’s) was adopted. And, furthermore, that Dave Thomas himself was also adopted. And, that the company donates a portion of their proceeds to an orphan/adoption charity, or owns and operates one and that maybe that was the reason that the company was originally started.
Now, I have been way too swamped today to check any of these facts, and frankly I don’t necessarily think that it matters. The point is that Wendy, the adopted red-headed child, is a great marketing story. I knew it was the case based on the emotion in which my wife described it to me and how my suggesting that it might be a marketing gimic seemed to dull her spirits just a bit. She wants to believe that the Wendy’s story is true. Maybe I will go home tonight and tell her that I verified her story 
So, my question is, does authenticity really matter if you have a story that people want to believe?
What other great marketing stories do you know?
1. Spamming People Doesn’t Work Like it Used To – People who spam others have determined that it doesn’t pay for itself like it used to. If you look at companies that are growing (e.g. Zappos), they don’t do a lot of advertising. They do just a little bit of advertising to keep their investors happy, but have realized that personalized messages will always do better than spam.
2. People Like Doing What Other People Are Doing – We like to be like each other. People strive to fit in and find their own groups, so marketers who facilitate this will win.
3. Ideas That Spread Win, and Free Ideas Spread Best – Godin explains that he made more money by giving away his book, Idea Virus, than he made on his previous New York Times best-seller. Free ideas create demand, and demand can always be monetized.
4. Remarks Make Something Remarkable – When people comment on something, then it is remarkable. The old model, which focuses on companies making average products for average people, is not remarkable. Companies that aren’t remarkable can’t grow quickly. By making products worth talking about, then companies can become remarkable.
5. What We Make and How We Make It Has Changed – In today’s economy, people are buying experiences and conversations. Godin provides the example of LittleMissMatched, a company that sells unmatched socks that provide a point of interest and conversation for young girls.
6. You Have the Opportunity to Lead a Tribe – Tribes exist today, and they’re looking for leaders. You don’t have to have charisma to be a leader. Leading gives leaders charisma. The internet is the ultimate extension of communication to help organize tribes. Don’t waste time trying to convert non-fans; instead, work to strengthen existing tribes.
7. Lots of Alternatives Exist – Choices are now rampant, so people or companies that are perceived as the best or the leaders are more successful. People have been trained to be good at a lot of things, but not to be the best at one niche skill. Difficult opportunities are the ones worth doing.
8. Don’t Be Afraid to Be Indispensible – Lots of opportunities exist to be a linchpin, but most people and companies are scared of being great and indispensible because it’s hard and scary. By overcoming this fear, marketers can become critical to business success.
Do you agree?
So, there is so much that I should be writing about, but just have been remiss in my duty to do so. I have been busy, but definitely engaged with marketing and advertising and business and life at every level. I am committed to getting this website back into shape and blogging regularly.
In my current position at American Barcode and RFID, I wear many hats and have been fortunate to work on many different types of projects. One thing that keeps coming acrosss my desk is graphic design. This is an area that I just don’t have a lot of strength in, but would love to get better at. So, I have decided to start learning graphic design and in particular get better at using Photoshop and Illustrator.
I ran through a couple of tutorials last night and in doing so, came across the website www.texturez.com - they have a lot of great backgrounds for free. I highly reccomend checking them out.
Let me know if there are any other sites out there that I should check out.
The Internet and sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter have made the need for personal branding more pressing than ever. Personal branding is an absolute necessity for entrepreneurs, executives, small business owners and job seekers alike. Literally hundreds of people are branding themselves as experts in your field every day. Showcasing your talents and positioning yourself as an authority in your industry will go a long way toward helping you reach your professional and personal goals.
I have laid out the following 10 steps that you can take today to get started toward building a brand on the Internet.
- Determine Current Visibility – As with any marketing initiative, it is important to establish a benchmark for measuring your success. Start by performing a Google (Yahoo and Bing) search for your name and any variations of your name. What comes up? Are you there at all? Is there anything negative about you that you don’t want people to see? Take note of how many instances are referring to you on the first 2 pages of results.
- Identify Your Brand Attributes – What makes you unique, authentic, different, relevant and compelling? In other words, why should I listen to you as opposed to the thousands of other “experts” in your industry? What do you promise? What value will I get from working with or hiring you? What are your goals? What is your purpose? What are your passions? I know these are very abstract ideas, but I encourage you to really take some time answering these questions and others like them. It will become your brand message and should be resonated in everything you do.
- Create a Brand Message/Mission Statement – If you have really put some time and thought into step 2, you should have a list of words and ideals that really move you. If you don’t, go back and do step 2 again. You should be able to create a sentence or two that describes why you are unique, relevant and compelling and at the same time motivates you to want to succeed.
- Register Your Domain Name – Do you own your own domain name (e.g. www.yourname.com)? If not, go register the domain right now. I personally like GoDaddy.com. Domains will cost you about $10 for a year. Go with a .com and NOT a .net or .us or .tv or anything else. Register your domain as your first and last name. No middle initials, no hyphens or underscores. If you want to get those domain names too, that is up to you, but make sure you get www.firstnamelastname.com at the very least. If you have a very popular name like John Smith, you may find that www.johnsmith.com it is already taken. In this case, it is best to add something about you professionally to the end as in www.johnsmithartist.com.
- Build a Website – There are many options for creating or having a website developed. Depending on your needs and level of understanding, you may need to outsource this to an interactive marketing consultant. For personal branding purposes, you do not need a lot of functionality, disk space or bandwidth to get started. This website will become the central repository for you to showcase your talents and demonstrate your expertise. At the very least, you will want to have a blog included in the website. Ideally, you will also provide other proof of your past performances such as testimonials, work samples, articles, press releases, pod casts, how to videos, photos etc. The tool that I found that works wonders, and provides all of this functionality without the need to know how to program, is WordPress. WordPress has tons of templates to choose from and hundreds of plug-ins to give your site a unique look and feel with all the functionality of a big corporate site. Best of all, it is free.
- Remember Brand Image – It is important to point out here that your image is a big part of your brand. As such, I would recommend getting a professional portrait taken for use on your website and social networking sites. Pictures of you and the cat just won’t cut it in the business world. I recommend Sears Portrait Studios. They have locations everywhere, take appointments every day and are relatively inexpensive. You may also want to consider creating a logo, or having one created for you. Use the logo everywhere you can.
- Increase Your Visibility – Now that you have a professional portrait, a working value statement/brand message and a presence on the World Wide Web, it is time to increase your visibility. One of the quickest and easiest ways to do so is to register on as many social media networking sites as you can. Start by going to Zoominfo.com and claiming your profile. Chances are they already have a profile of you and that it just needs to be updated. Next, register and create profiles on LinkedIn.com, Twitter.com, Facebook.com and other sites like eCademy.com, Spoke.com, Ryze.com, Ziki.com, and Friendfeed.com. It is important to fill out as much of your profile information on each of these sites as you can, including links back to your website and blog. Once you have created a profile for one of them, (i.e. LinkedIn) it will be easy to create the others by copying and pasting the information from one to the others. I wouldn’t worry too much about maintaining all of these accounts. I actively use Facebook for personal networking and LinkedIn for professional networking. Using a service like ping.fm allows you to post status updates to all your profiles at the same time and even from your cell phone.
- Remove Negatives – If when you performed the Google search in step 1 you found that there were some things out there about you that are less than favorable, you need to do your best to remove them. If the content is on a site or profile that you have control over this is pretty easy – remove it. If the content is on someone else’s site or profile, you can certainly ask them to remove it. If they refuse to do so, then steps 4-7 will help get you on the way to at least pushing that stuff off the first page of results.
- Give to Get – Remember that social networking is all about building relationships. As with any healthy relationship, you get out what you put in. Recommend people that you know or have done business with on LinkedIn. Reference other people’s work in your blog and articles. Digg the stories that you like and bookmark good content on sites like Delicious and StumbleUpon. Remember people’s birthdays and special events using AmericanGreetings.com. You will be surprised how quickly these things find there way back to you.
- Monitor Your Brand – Once you have all these pieces in place, it is a good idea to continue to monitor your brand’s reach and visibility. Perform routine Google searches to see how well you are showing up over time. Another cool tool is Addictomatic.com which will allow you to create a dashboard on any given topic to see where and how it is showing up online. Enter your name in there and see how your word is starting to spread.
This is a shortened and simplified social media branding strategy, but this will work as a great head start for personal branding and as a corporate branding strategy. There is obviously a lot more that can be done and a lot more that will be revealed as you move along this path. If you follow these 10 steps, you will be well on your way to owning your brand on the Internet and mastering the World Wide Web 2.0.
Email is the number one online activity and the effectiveness of a well executed email marketing campaign cannot be disputed. As an email marketing consultant, clients are surprised to find out how quickly and inexpensively a campaign can be set up and how much return they can get on their time and investment. There is simply no better way to build and maintain relationships with your customers and prospects.
Of course, all of the above statements are true if, and only if, your email marketing campaign is set up, executed, and managed properly. Following these email marketing tips and suggestions will help ensure your campaign is on its way to success.
1. Avoid the Spam Filters – Most Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) employ pretty rigorous SPAM filters. One sure fire way to impede the success of an email marketing campaign is for your emails to be flagged as SPAM and deleted before they even get to the intended recipient. To make sure that your emails aren’t immediately flagged as SPAM, avoid using gimmicky words like “FREE”, “$$$”, “SAVE”, “DISCOUNT”, etc in both the subject line and in the content of the email.
2. Remember the Preview Pane – Most email clients, like MS Outlook and Thunderbird, give users the option of turning the preview pane on or off. This is the function that allows users to see what is in the email message without having to double-click and open the message. Most people have this turned on. When writing the copy for your email, keep this in mind. Put your most compelling offer and exciting information at the top of the email where it will be visible in the preview pane. It is this information, combined with the subject line (See Tip #8) and the “from name”, that most people will evaluate to determine whether or not to read the email or delete it immediately.
3. Create a Clear Call to Action – I know this sounds obvious, but you would be surprised at how many emails I get that simply don’t tell me what it is they want me to do next. The content may be great, and the design may be beautiful, but if your reader doesn’t know what you want them to do or how you want them to do it, then it is all for nothing and will be deleted. As such, a clear call to action should include exactly what it is you want the reader to do and what they will get in return. For example “Click here for 20% off your next visit.” Be careful not to distract readers with too many offers. Having too many calls to action can be just as confusing as not having any call to action. If you have more great offers, save them for another email.
4. Be Consistent – If you are running a newsletter or sending out frequent emails, you want to make sure that your message is consistent. Create an email template that closely matches the look and feel of your website so that people automatically associate the two. Use this template every time you send an email. This will help strengthen the image of both the email and the website. If you are sending out a monthly or weekly newsletter, make sure you send it out on the same day and time every time (i.e. Third Tuesday at 4:30PM EST). Your readers will come to expect and recognize your emails.
5. Personalize the Email – Instead of using the boring and generic “Dear Sir/Madam” (I hope no one uses that), use your recipients name whenever possible. You will most likely be sending emails out in bulk and not individually typing them to each subscriber. An email that addresses your customer by name feels less bulky and makes them feel less like a number. Using your customer’s name helps establish that you already have a relationship and, as such they will be more likely to look at your email and click through to your offer.
6. Make Unsubscribing Easy – The only thing worse than no subscribers are unhappy subscribers. Subscribers who are not interested in your emails are worth nothing to you and the resources for mailing to them are wasted. If someone no longer wants to receive emails from you, it is imperative that you make it easy and painless for them to unsubscribe. Always include a personalized unsubscribe link that takes recipients to a short form that politely and immediately removes them from your mailing list.
7. Send on Tuesday or Wednesday – Studies have shown that afternoons on Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best days to send your email marketing messages. People are more receptive on these days and are more likely to read your email. Mondays are no good because people are trying to get caught up and organized from the weekend and are typically looking to quickly purge their inboxes of unnecessary emails. Thursdays and Fridays are difficult because many people are already thinking about the weekend and are just trying to wrap things up.
8. Use a Compelling Subject Line – It is said that when an emails arrives in someone’s inbox, they usually decide in less than a second whether or not they will read it, save it for later, or delete it. Tip #2 already mentioned the preview pane. In addition to that, the subject line is probably the most crucial component of any email campaign. Don’t use boring or generic subjects like “XYZ Company Newsletter.” Instead try thinking of a benefit that your offer provides that makes the offer compelling “10 Ways to Increase Email ROI.” You can also search Google News (or any news search engine) for topics that relate to your offer. Take note of the headlines that grab your attention and tailor your subject line accordingly.
9. Always Include a Signature – Always include a signature at the bottom of every email you send out that includes your name, your web address, your email address and maybe even your phone number. This gives people a few other ways to connect with you should they be interested in your offer but for whatever reason do not want to click through the email. It also helps make the email feel more personal as it is coming from a real person and not just some automated system.
10. Monitor the Statistics – Most email services provide statistics that can be used in conjunction with your website analytics to measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns. Monitoring stats like open rates (percentage of people that opened the email), click-through rates (percentage of people that clicked-through to your offer), and conversion rates (percentage of people that completed the sales process) will allow you to more effectively tweak your campaigns for maximum performance. Test things like the subject line, the offer, the placement of images and text in the email, the placement of images and text on the landing page, the day you send it, the time you send it, etc. Over time, you will find a system that works for you and maximizes the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign.
These 10 tips will help you strengthen the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns and increase the return on your email marketing investment. Keeping these suggestions in mind will bring your email campaign to a whole new level and help you build and maintain loyal customer relationships.
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