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Live Long and Market: Small Business Branding
Jul 31st
Marketing is the process of communicating your value to your public. Whether it’s a product or service, if what you offer has value and solves a problem, then you need to market it in a way that lets your target audience know just how important it is to their lives.
If marketing is communication, then your brand is a part of the message. According to the American Marketing Association a brand is a “name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” And everyone can afford to be distinctive (at least on some level) — distinctively simple, distinctively effective, etc.
You have to stand out to the right people (your target audience) for the right reasons (you solve their problem in a way that resonates with them). In other words, your brand – your distinction – is the consistent message about what your product is and what it does. Your logo, your tagline, your key phrases, your service style and your customer service team all advance your brand. The more consistent and frequent the message, the more people hear you.
Who Loves Your Brand the Most?
In “How to Recognize and Reward Brand Advocacy,” Yvonne DiVita makes a distinction between your fans and brand advocates. She says, “Brand advocates do things like write a blog around your product, or tweet about you daily, and faithfully follow you on Facebook.” She says the brand advocate is more devoted than a fan and is “loyal to a fault – all without being asked or compensated.” Sounds like somebody you want on your team.
While marketing seems to come with a lot of terms that make it easy to slip into semantics, Yvonne’s key point resonates with me. She encourages us to find your brand advocates, “understand them, reward them and measure their engagement.” And she provides suggestions on how to get it done.
How Do You Advance Your Brand Online?
If you accept the role of marketing and the impact that branding can have, then you have the choice to advance your message in print as well as online. In “The 6 Biggest Social Media Mistakes Brands Make,” Janet Thaeler discusses the common errors we all make, including the impersonal initial contact. Have you seen or done this before:
- Person finds you (or you find person).
- Person wants to connect with you (or you want to connect with person).
- Person writes you some stiff email to “connect” (or you’re the one writing the “stiff” email).
- Person gets disappointed as you wonder “who is this?” and naturally deflect the interaction (or vice versa).
It’s all in the greeting.
In order to make this conversation work you need a touchstone, a point of conversational contact, a reason to talk that’s a little bigger than just you. Janet says, “The initial contact with someone you hope to work with should be personable….To get a feel for what they are interested in and care about, read their blog and Twitter stream.” Her other five tips are helpful as well. But what if you swear that social media is not the thing for you….
How Do You Advance Your Brand Offline?
Maybe your clients aren’t online and just don’t use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Maybe. In “5 Powerful Alternatives for Social Media Haters,” Ivana Taylor accepts your hatred of social media (I say that in jest) and offers you solutions.
Ivana says, “The number-one benefit marketers found from using social media is brand and company exposure.” But if you discover that your target market doesn’t use social media, then she says “your best bet is to create your own community,” starting with building a list.
Your goal is to create a community, and your email list and email campaign are among the most effective ways to connect and advance that relationship. While I believe in social media, connecting by email is also a solid foundation for business – and laying a foundation always comes first. Ivana also gives advice on how to handle your blog and tips on how to engage your developing community.
In the spirit of Spock (yes, Star Trek) and spoken directly to your business: Live long and market.
Live Long and Market: Small Business Branding
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
How long is your long run?
May 7th
The bank robber may have a long run of just thirty minutes. Stealing money today appears worth it because tomorrow is just too far away to consider.
There are organizations and nations that have been around for hundreds of years and expect to be around for another thousand. They have a long run a little longer than yours.
I think we can agree on what the short run is. The question worth asking your brand, your boss or your family is: what’s the long run? Most of the time, we err on the side of short.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
Hard work vs. Long work
May 3rd
Long work is what the lawyer who bills 14 hours a day filling in forms does.
Hard work is what the insightful litigator does when she synthesizes four disparate ideas and comes up with an argument that wins the case–in less than five minutes.
Long work has a storied history. Farmers, hunters, factory workers… Always there was long work required to succeed. For generations, there was a huge benefit that came to those with the stamina and fortitude to do long work.
Hard work is frightening. We shy away from hard work because inherent in hard work is risk. Hard work is hard because you might fail. You can’t fail at long work, you merely show up. You fail at hard work when you don’t make an emotional connection, or when you don’t solve the problem or when you hesitate.
I think it’s worth noting that long work often sets the stage for hard work. If you show up enough and practice enough and learn enough, it’s more likely you will find yourself in a position to do hard work.
It seems, though that no matter how much long work you do, you won’t produce the benefits of hard work unless you are willing to leap.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
Long Lost Marketing Secrets
Apr 22nd
Highly converting package of 4 Hard-to-find marketing classics that top marketers use today. Works by Claude Hopkins, Elmer Wheeler, and Walter Dill Scott. Plus 3 bonuses that are rare but contain nuggets of gold that will help you earn more money.
Long Lost Marketing Secrets
30%, the long tail and a future of serialized content
Feb 25th
The 1960s and 70s were the golden age of magazines. Why?
- Lots of people wanted to read them
- The newsstand could only hold a few of them (barrier to entry permits some to win)
- The winners had no trouble selling ads because they had motivated readers, in quantity
- The cost of making one more edition of the magazine was relatively low
Enter tablets. To some, it feels like the dawn of a new golden age. People page through apps like Wired and gasp at the pretty pictures and cool features. Surely, we’re going to recreate that moment.
Here’s the problem, and here’s how Apple is making it much worse:
The newsstand is infinite. That means that far more titles will have far fewer subscribers. There are more than 60,000 apps on the newsstand. Hard to be in the short head when the long tail is so long…
plus, the cost of each issue is far higher, because it costs a lot more to pay a videographer, a video editor, a programmer, etc. than it does to pay John Updike to write 4,000 words…
plus, advertisers are harder to come by, because the number of readers is always going to be lower than it was back then, and the ads are easier to skip.
Of course, the good news is that the publisher doesn’t have to pay for paper, so the profit on each subscriber ought to be way higher. Except…
Except Apple has announced that they want to tax each subscription made via the iPad at 30%. Yes, it’s a tax, because what it does is dramatically decrease the incremental revenue from each subscriber. An intelligent publisher only has two choices: raise the price (punishing the reader and further cutting down readership) or make it free and hope for mass (see my point above about the infinite newsstand). When you make it free, it’s all about the ads, and if you don’t reach tens or hundreds of thousands of subscribers, you’ll fail.
In a rare glitch, John Gruber got Apple’s decision about the 30% subscription task completely wrong. By his logic, Apple would have been just as good for its users if the tax was 60%.
For content to be fabulous, for tablets to be more than game platforms, folks like Apple need to do two things:
- Reward creators instead of taxing them.
- Create promotional channels so that curated great stuff (not merely things from big companies) has a chance to reach a mass audience.
The web has been a hotbed of siloed content, of deep dives for small audiences. The large scale stuff, though, has tended to be mostly about gossip and other quick reads that’s cheap to produce. Tablets offer a new chance to create content worth paying for. Paving the way for that to happen is a smart move for anyone who cares about the audience and the devices.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
A&P Bankruptcy Was a Long Time Coming
Dec 13th
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., or A&P, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The legendary grocer, which was the biggest in the country from the 1920s-1960s, plans to keep all of its stores open during the reorganization. From the AP:
According to the filing submitted late Sunday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, N.Y., the company listed total debts of more than $3.2 billion and assets of about $2.5 billion.
A&P, like most grocers, is struggling with the weak economy, reduced spending by consumers and intense competition. The company said aggressive competition from nontraditional food retailers like warehouse clubs, discount chains such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and dollar stores have compounded the problem.
It is also struggling with pension costs, lease costs for store locations it has closed, and a contract with C&S Wholesale Grocers Inc., which provides the majority of its inventory, which it has been unable to negotiate down to lower costs. A&P also has one of the most heavily unionized work forces in the business, with 95 percent of its workers covered under collective bargaining agreements. It said in its filing it would seek to work with the unions to lower those costs.
A&P started as a mail-order tea business in the 1870s. Its first general grocery store opened in 1912. A&P’s decline arguably started in the 1970s, so this bankruptcy has been a very long time coming.
A&P, in an attempt to stem losses, closed 25 stores this September. Many of these stores were former Pathmark stores, a company that A&P merged with in 2007, then basically followed into the ground with poor sales and bad debt.
A&P put itself in a position where it couldn’t compete with megaretailers like Wal-Mart and Target, who now offer the same foods at a lower price, according to this New Jersey Star-Ledger article. Combining limited selection with high prices and poor employee morale, then merging with the failing Pathmark, was not a real competitive strategy.
Unlike many companies that have gone bankrupt during this recession, A&P had it coming for a long time.
View full post on Business Pundit
Long Term Care Insurance Secrets
Nov 7th
Hot Boomer & Womens Product Retirement Insurance Aka Long Term Care Insurance Buying Guide. Cash In On Lucrative Boomer Market. U.s. Citizens 50 To 65 Possess 30 Percent Of All Discretionary Income In U.s. Boomers Are Online And Ready To Buy.
Long Term Care Insurance Secrets
Four Loko Likely Not Long for the Shelves
Oct 26th
Phusion Products’ Four Loko, or “blackout in a can,” is a $2.50 drink that lets you glug the equivalent of several cups of coffee and a six pack of beer in one fruity-flavored, 23.5-ounce beverage.
The drink, developed by three Ohio State University alumni, is most recently believed to have caused nine university students in Washington to pass out and require hospital care. As a result, Central Washington University became the latest school to ban the noxious beverage. ABC has the story:
Four Loko manufacturer Phusion Projects defended its product in a statement to ABC News, pointing to seven labels on the can warning of the drink’s contents and calling attention to the need for identification to purchase it.
“The unacceptable incident at Central Washington University, which appears to have involved hard liquor … and possibly illicit substances,” the statement read, “is precisely why we go to great lengths to ensure our products are not sold to underage consumers and are not abused.”
In it’s statement to ABC News, Phusion Projects said Four Loko was as safe as any other alcoholic beverage.
“Consuming caffeine and alcohol together has been done safely for years,” the statement read. “Our products contain less alcohol than an average rum and cola, less alcohol and caffeine than an average Red Bull and vodka, and are comparable to having coffee after a meal with a couple glasses of wine.”
The FDA doesn’t agree, according to Reason Magazine:
In November 2009, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent a warning letter to Phusion and 26 other brewers and distillers whose products are characterized by the “intentional addition of caffeine” (as opposed to alcoholic beverages that are flavored with coffee). Turns out the agency never explicitly approved the stimulant as an additive to any food product other than “cola-type beverages.” Unless the manufacturers of Four Loko and similar products can prove that adding caffeine to alcohol is “generally recognized as safe,” the FDA may force them to remove their products from the marketplace. (Energy drinks, on the other hand, are considered “dietary supplements” rather than “food,” and are regulated under a different law.)
Besides containing caffeine and 12% alcohol, Four Loko is also loaded with the stimulants taurine and guarana. For drinkers, the beauty of this “cocaine in a can” is that it is:
1. Guaranteed to get you drunk
2. Guaranteed to prevent your drunk ass from falling asleep
No wonder national sales of Four Loko are up more than 400% in the past year, according to an ABC report.
Phusion Products, despite all of its official denial, is marketed toward binge-drinking college students. Heck, it was invented by them. The guys behind it know what college students want. They know their “alcopop” can keep you partying all night; they also know it tastes better than cheap, malty, high-alcohol predecessors like Steel Reserve. They know that the bright, energy-drinkesque can that Four Loko comes in is attractive to college kids.
I think the FDA will bust these guys. Four Loko is probably not long for the shelves.
View full post on Business Pundit
When the long tail is underwater
Oct 10th
There are millions of songs on iTunes that have sold zero copies. Millions of blog posts that get zero visitors each day.
The long tail is real… given the ability, people create more variety. Given the choice, people seek out what’s just right for them to consume. But, and there’s a big but, there’s no guarantee that the ends of the long tail start producing revenue or traffic. And a million times zero is still zero.
Sometimes, the best strategy isn’t to to head farther and farther out on the tail. No, you don’t have to make average stuff for average people. But it also doesn’t pay to brainwash yourself into believing that super-extreme is the same as profitable.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
Verizon Wireless: Will launch its 4G Long Term Evolution or LTE network in 38 U.S. markets, including South Florida by…
Oct 6th
| Sprint for example launched its 4G network in Baltimore in late 2008, which is now available in 55 markets nationwide. |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
