THIS BLOG HAS MOVED!

Click on one of the images above to be taken to my new blog or my website.

Blog: Sage Advice Blog Website: Write On Marketing & Copywriting

I’ve moved this blog because it wasn’t adding anything to the internet except clutter. I’ve got a new view on marketing and life in general, through the eyes of my dog, Sage. I also added a website to describe what I do, because let’s face it, dogs don’t write.

So I hope to see you on my new blog, and I hope you’ll add some animal stories of your own. Sage will wag her tail if you subscribe to her posts!

So go to Sage Advice Blog now. If you post a comment, Sage will give you a big slurpy ear kiss!

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a “name, term, sign, symbol or design (or a combination of them) intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.”

Many companies spend time, money, and effort in developing just the right combination of color, font, and graphics to form an image that customers will notice and think is clever. They stress that this image be “just right.” I’m not saying a graphical image isn’t important, but I do think the process is backwards.

Branding comes naturally with your products and services. As customers interact with your company, you develop a reputation. This reputation is your brand. It is much more important than any graphical representation you use. The most reputable brands are those that are dependable as well as ego-boosting. In other words they make people feel good about themselves.

I don’t buy Durango boots because everyone sees the name (which is stamped on the bottom of the sole). I buy Durango boots because they look cool, are comfortable, and last forever. This is the type of branding that matters to me when I choose shoes. This is the type of branding that makes me feel good about myself.

Let’s face it: The color of your logo is not going to determine whether or not your customers buy from you. They are much more likely to buy from you because of how you make them feel. So how can you use this information to develop your brand?

• Understand the wants and needs of your customers.
• Offer high-quality products or services that people want.
• Make sure your product or service is something you love as well.
• Do what you say you will do.
• Give your clients great customer service in the rare event that something goes awry.

Your brand dwells in the hearts and minds of your customers. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions with your company. If you understand your customers and fill their needs, your business will automatically develop a following of satisfied customers and in turn become a brand.

Permission Marketing.

Permission Marketing, is turning strangers into friends and friends into customers.

The best way to get permission marketing to work for you is to give. Give advice, samples, freebies, trials, and other such goodies related to what you do in your business. Don’t expect anything in return for these goodies. (That defeats the purpose of giving.)

When you give something for free, it creates good feelings between you and the person you gave the gift to. They might not need your product or services right now, but when they do need your services or products, they will think of you first because of your gift. They will also readily refer people to you.

An example of this is when someone learns that I am a copywriter. I get lots of requests to look over promotional items that someone has written. I don’t charge for this (unless it’s very long). I spend a few minutes going over the item, and then I give the person my impressions. Most of the time I will find many good things about what they’ve created. Usually I’ll also find one or two things that need improvement, or something that could be changed or added. This doesn’t take a long time and has given me tons of business.

Even if the person decides to change the flier herself, she will remember that I offered advice for free. She will think of me the next time someone mentions that they need a brochure or flier, or something else.

So what gifts can you give this holiday season to your clients?

This got me to thinking about my “elephants.” Elephants are those big projects that you want to tackle, but are unsure how to do so. We’ve all heard the adage, “you eat an elephant one bite at a time;” which is a reminder to break a big project into smaller tasks. When you break down those big projects AND you add a deadline to each task or bite, then you can actually get the elephant eaten.

I personally need to remember this advice – especially in the fall when Thanksgiving and Christmas plans tend to be my focus.

So how does this relate to marketing? Well, in order to be effective at marketing you have to break it down. It is important to set tasks with deadlines. It can also be important to limit the time you spend on twitter and facebook. Although these are great venues for drumming up business, they can also become time wasters. So these deadlines can work both ways – setting a time by which to get something done, and limiting the time you spend on the task if it could be a time waster.

It’s also important to break down big tasks, such as blogging, setting up an email campaign, or getting a Press Release done.

What do you think about eating your Elephants? (P.S. Stay Tuned – Tomorrow I’ll discuss why planning is as important as deadlines, and you’ll learn how to catch a tiger by the tail!

[For more on accomplishing your goals, see My blog post: Keep Your New Year's Resolutions with these Tips]

So pass it on!

The same type of recommendation exists in blogs. It is called linking.

When you link to something in your blog, you are giving the linked content a mini-letter of recommendation. So make sure you know what and who you are linking to, and that your readers will appreciate the reference.

These recommendations consist of blogrolls, comment links, and trackbacks. When you post a link, you are encouraging your readers to click it and visit the other site.

Your Blogroll is one way to link to others. On the right of my blog you will see two categories of links: Great Products/Services and Great Websites. The Products/Services are things that I personally use. They have enriched my life and I want to share them to help my readers. Some of them I have an affiliation with and others I don’t; but regardless of my monetary relationship with the services and products, I think they will help others.

The Great Websites are sites that I find interesting, ethical, and useful. That’s why I list them – to help my readers.

Comment links come from your readers. They are recommendations from them to sites and discussions that (hopefully) add to the discussion of your post.

The best letter of recommendation, however, is a trackback. A trackback is a linking of one post to another. This alerts the other blog that you linked to them with a discussion about a specific post. It continues the conversation. It’s also a great way to establish relationships between bloggers. When you link to a post on someone else’s site, they will probably click back to your site to see what you referenced. After all, you just gave them a “thumbs up” on something they wrote.

Everyone is curious; and most people have a “need to know” what’s going on mentality. Linking helps fill these needs. The more trackbacks and comments a post has, the greater its interest to your readers. Readers want to check things out and be part of the action.

So how can you increase your reader interest through linking?

1. Decide on a post schedule. Some people love to post several times a day. Others can’t find time for more than once a week. Choose a schedule somewhere in-between these two and stick to it. Readers will come to anticipate your posts on the schedule you set. (I personally post 3-4 times per week.)
2. Schedule time to write. Like anything else, unless you schedule time for writing, it won’t get done. Blogging is a form of advertising. It is cheap compared to other forms, but it does take time.
3. Drip your posts. You don’t have to publish a post immediately after you create it. You can create several posts in one session and use the publish date feature to have them appear on your schedule. This makes it easier if you have a very full week coming up.
4. Relate your life to your business. Add some personality to your posts by relating things you’ve noticed to what you write. Ideas come from the news, your spouse, and even your dog.
5. Carry a notebook EVERYWHERE. Ideas will strike you and you can quickly write them down in a small notebook.
6. Collaborate. Have a friend help you with some posts. Or hire a writer. New people can give “fresh blood” to your site.
7. Create an editorial calendar. I hope you already use a calendar of some sort. If not, buy a cheap one. Write down ideas for holidays, sales you anticipate having, new products or services you want to promote, etc. It keeps things organized.

An example of using an editorial calendar is this very post. I knew Halloween was coming up and I wanted some good photos to use. I found this one on flickr and decided to create a headline around “sucking.” This post was the result.

So what tips do you have for keeping the life in your blog?

So when you advertise an item, it is good to come up with as many ways to show it as possible. My good friend Jennifer, owner of Reflections Printing, recently did this with a project she was creating.

Jennifer is a graphic artist. She created a poster for a client advertising a haunted house. Besides printing several hundred posters, Jennifer suggested to her client that they also print business cards. These cards had the event information and $1.00 off coupon on them. These would give prospective ‘hauntees’ a reminder and an incentive to have a scary-good time. It would also encourage them to pick up a few cards and hand them out to their friends, thus increasing attendance and revenues. These cards were placed on the counters in the businesses where the posters were put up.

I thought this was a clever way to add value and more exposure to a great project. What ways can you increase your exposure?

Advertising has changed a lot in the past few years. It is no longer enough to come up with a clever jingle, show it to tons of people, and hope they will buy your stuff. Consumers are smarter than they were in the 70’s. They want more from their products than just clever advertising. So what’s a small business to do?

Develop your Relationship Marketing. Relationship marketing is cheaper, more measurable, and much more fun than branding. Relationship marketing is about getting to know your customers and helping them solve problems through your products or services. In the process, you actually develop your very own brand. Seth Godin describes a brand as: “a promise made over time.”

For this type of “promise-made-over-time” branding to work, you have to have a promise that is exciting – to you and to your customers. You have to fall in love with your business.So quit thinking of your brand as a clever jingle and instead work on developing your business integrity. A good way to do this is to:

1) Offer a high-quality product or service that people want.
2) Make sure your product or service is something you love as well.
3) Give your clients great customer service.

This reputation or status is what branding in business is all about anyway. You really can’t have that before you start. It’s like a baby learning to run before they walk. So worry more about building value in your business than choosing exactly the right logo for your brand. Here at Digital Marketing Diva, my branding is that I help small business owners (who are overwhelmed by all the ’stuff’ to do on the internet) get online with their business. It’s an exciting process to see the light turn on inside someone’s head as they figure out how they can help others through the power of the internet.

So what promise does your business make?

The report showed that women with children like to be marketed to differently than women without children. Who knew? I mean I might not go out in the evening as much as my childless-counterparts, but I assumed that they wanted to be marketed to in the same ways I do.

When I am interested in a subject, I like to know what is going on and about new products. Of course, that means someone has to tell me about these things. I either get this knowledge through news, friends, or ads. Many times I sign up for emails that I am interested in. But as the chart below shows, women without children DON’T like to be marketed to through email as much as women who have children.

Also, women with children are much more responsive to samples than non-mothers, as this chart below shows.

It is fascinating to me the breadth of information that is available online. Now if I can just figure out how to apply it to my life and to my customers.

What do you think? How does this apply to your ideal customer and marketing strategy?