Marketing Truths to Live By

Posted by Colin Clark on Feb 17th, 2010 | Comments home title

What can be measured can be improved.
More eyeballs is not always better.
Sales are the ultimate metric.
Vision is more important than tactics.
Luck is Labor Under Correct Knowledge.
Marketing is an investment in yourself.
Different is usually better.
Belief is more important than strategy.
Attention is a valuable asset.
Trust is the ultimate asset.

Tune In to the Secrets of Real Business Leaders (startupprofessionals.com)
Ways to make your marketing more personalized? (startups.com)
Your Business Is Worthless if It Depends on You (ducttapemarketing.com)

When Marketing Makes Things SO Much Better

Posted by Colin Clark on Feb 12th, 2010 | Comments home title

Which tastes better, Coco-Coal or generic brand cola?

Does Coke really taste better?

Which is better for doing everyday computing, a 15 inch top-of-the-line Macbook Pro, or an off-brand machine running Windows XP.

Would the average user know the difference if it weren’t for marketing?

Here’s my point… Every industry and every product has a brand. Whether you like it or not, you’re either name-brand, generic brand, or somewhere in between.

And believe it or not, you do have control over how people view your brand, and it’s not just about how much you charge compared to your competition.

There are dozens of factors that influence how people see your brand. Here are some things to consider.

Is your brand consistent visually? Do you have standard colors that you use on signage, business cards, and other marketing materials? Do you have standard fonts? Believe it or not, these visuals work on a subtle level to reinforce awareness in your brand.
Is your message consistent? Enjoy, Coke. Nike, Just Do It. iPod, 1000 Songs in Your Pocket. Mazda, Zoom Zoom. You remember these slogans, because these companies have consistently driven them home. Just because you’re small doesn’t mean you can’t be just as consistent in your branding.
Do you have a clear customer service mission? I don’t like the term ‘mission statement’ because I feel it is a bit vague. I prefer the term ‘customer service mission’. This is how you define how you and your employees serve customers. Everyone in your organization should be aware of this mission.
Do you have a consistent communications plan? Are you on Twitter, Facebook, TV, or Radio? Do you put a lot of stock into email marketing? There is no right or wrong way to get the message out, but it is extremely important that you are effectively reaching your target market on a regular basis.

Is There Brand Loyalty In A Recession? (myventurepad.com)
Start-ups need to invest in building brands, not just products (hardknoxlife.com)
Brands Response to Dying Consumer Love for Valentine’s Day (pamil-visions.net)

5 Ways Mid-Sized Brands Can Win with Social Media

Posted by Colin Clark on Feb 8th, 2010 | Comments home title

Let’s say you’re an established regional brand. You’ve been in business 10 or 20 years and you operate from a fixed geographic area. You’re generally well-known by most people who use your kind of service, but you’d really like to increase your market share.

Here are some tips to help make that happen using electronic media.

Start with your database. Do you know who your best customers are? Are you working to increase permission with your best customers. Step one is definitely to put together a list of the biggest fans of your business or organization.
Consider a frequency strategy using email. If you’re not sending frequent email newsletters, you’re probably missing an opportunity. I use MailChimp, because it is a great value and has great features. Consider content that is of real value to your list. Frequency is important, but quality is key.
Create a facebook strategy for your employees. If you’ve got sales or customer service employees, they can be a great asset. Chances are they have great relationships with your customers already, so it’s not too big of a jump to allow them to friend customers on Facebook and post relevant content on their pages, providing they are comfortable doing this.
Get your business on Twitter. It might seem like Twitter is silly and you won’t understand it at first, but it’s a lot like other tools that don’t make sense at first, but become powerful once you learn to leverage them. Ask your customers if they’re using Twitter and engage with them there. It’s great PR.
Get a flexible website. I use wordpress for all my websites, because it makes it easy to incorporate my website into marketing initiatives, because I can easily change content, create signup forms, post blogs, etc. I realize that a new website is a substantial investment, but it is one that will yield a lot of dividends if you learn to leverage it effectively.

Obviously, there’s a lot more strategy that goes with these tools, but this is a great start.

Yes, Content is Still King

Posted by Colin Clark on Feb 7th, 2010 | Comments home title

Johnnie Firari posted a blog on Smaller Indiana that I found interesting. It contemplates whether content is still king with the great explosion of content that is currently out there. He made some excellent points and I left this comment in response.

@garyvee is right. Content is valuable is you are the absolute best. The best way to be the best is to create an extremely narrow niche. The narrower the niche, the less competition.

Secondly, I think frequency is the most important factor with content. Short, frequent blasts of content (whether video, podcast, or text), allow viewers to check in with you more often, because it takes less time to consume.

The other half is that obviously content alone is not going to be enough. You’re going to have to couple your content with a distribution strategy.

I think the main argument that the ‘content is king’ crowd is making is that all the distribution in the world will be wasted on shoddy content that has little inherent value on its own.

30 Bloggers To Watch in 2010 (problogger.net)
Mashable has more influence than CNN on Twitter (inquisitr.com)
The Rise of the Content Class (techstartups.com)

3 Ways to Get Attention – Buy, Earn, or Steal

Posted by Colin Clark on Feb 6th, 2010 | Comments home title

If you distill your job as a marketer down far enough, you really only have to do 2 things. First you have to create and define your message, and then you have to get that message in front of people.

When you start talking about getting your message in front of the right audience, you’re really talking about attention, which is essentially the most valuable commodity in the modern world.

3 Ways to Get Attention

1. You can earn it.

This is the kind of attention you get through permission marketing, search engine marketing, social media marketing, etc. It takes time, but attention earned is extremely valuable.

Any time you build a following through word of mouth you’re earning attention. You can also earn attention by creating amazing products worth talking about or by creating ideas that are so good they spread.

2. You can buy it.

You can buy advertising on TV, Radio, the web, billboards, magazines, or pretty much anywhere else. This kind of attention is great as long as the message matches the audience.

It is critical that you match your marketing message to the media outlet or much of your marketing spending will be wasted.

Examples…

Advertising a cooking tool on the Food Network.
Advertising email marketing software on a web design blog.
Advertising earbuds for runners in Runners World magazine
the list goes on and on…

You can steal it.

You steal attention when you send you enewsletter to people who didn’t ask for it. You steal attention when you put a popup on your website that the user didn’t expect. You steal attention when you buy a list from someone and spam the recipients.

Stealing is wrong. Stealing attention WILL damage your brand in the long run and is not a good investment.

Do People Believe Your Faceless Brand?

Posted by Colin Clark on Feb 6th, 2010 | Comments home title

Yes… Probably.

One of the things that marketers seem to be talking about incessantly is that social media can ad a human face to big established brands.

I think this is a little misguided.

I’m not saying that big brands shouldn’t have a presence in social media, but I I don’t want to see social media taken over by a bunch of crappy commercials. Big brands need to understand the concept of an opt-in.

The real opportunity is for new unestablished brands to build a following. It is far cheaper and easier now to build a following than it has ever been in history.

The fact is, those who really believe that the time is now will win. I don’t care if the CEO of Pepsi is on Twitter. I’d be much more interested in the guy making organic specialty soda in his garage and selling it locally. That’s the guy who can get real ROI in his investment in social media.

So what about the people in the middle? Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post.

Golden Nuggets from Seth Godin

Posted by Colin Clark on Feb 2nd, 2010 | Comments home title

One of the reasons I love reading Seth Godin’s stuff is that he has this amazing ability to distill wisdom into really meaningful, short passages. Here’s one that he posted yesterday…

Busy does not equal important. Measured doesn’t mean mattered.

How awesome is that!? ‘Measured doesn’t mean mattered’. I absolutely love that. You could say that to any marketer and get a response. With as much wheel-spinning as a lot of us seem to do, it’s great to hear a line like that once in a while.

Recently I finally got around to reading ‘Permission Marketing‘. I know, I know, I should have read this one years ago, but I just now got around to it. The other day I found the most perfect line that really defines how we should be defining the scope of website design and function.

Every commercial website should be set up to accomplish one goal. Your Web site should be 100% focused on signing up strangers to give you permission to market to them.

Is there really anything else to say about that? This is really the essence of why you pay someone to build you a website in the first place, and should be the main consideration when choosing a web developer.