Moving house or rebranding?

www.123rf.com

I'm moving house. Not just house, but city. Not just city, but country. A perfect excuse to spring clean and tackle those chores that have been on the bottom of the 'to do' list for years. Will this change be enough to transform my thinking and turn me into a marketing goddess overnight? Probably not.

I've recently been working with a client who's rebranding. Rebranding is all about change. People will take another look if things are different enough, but like moving house if the people and products and processes remain the same, a new name will not be enough to increase visibility or radically impact sales.

Rebrands often fail because expectations are too high. Management levels want to embrace the new look and feel, but ultimately it's changing what you do rather than how you look, that truly moves a company forward.

If you're contemplating a rebrand make sure

1. your focus is on positioning your companies offering against best alternatives in the market
2. all stakeholders are bought into the vision behind the new name/logo and not just the design
3. realistic expectations are set across your company with supporting internal marketing

Rebrands are generally expensive and time consuming projects, which in my experience, promise more than they deliver.

Perhaps you just need a relaunch, but that's a whole other blogpost.

The Two Sentence Value Proposition

Ah the value proposition. Stuff of legend, cure for all ills and generally most overlooked tool in the marketers box. At its simplest, your value proposition needs to show how your product/service benefits your customer from their point of view.

Two, well thought through sentences, is all it takes. The first should show the value of your offering and the second puts that value into context, positioning it so the customer understands what's in it for them and how that compares with the other possibilities open to them.

Sounds simple enough, but let me break that down further.

First sentence - Why what you've got to sell matters

a) Who is it for?

b) Why do they need it?

c) What's your product service called

d) Statement of benefit

Second sentence - Confirmation that your customer is making the right choice

e) Position your product against your main competition

f) Show what differentiates your product (what makes you unique/what makes you different?)

g) State how this is money well spent/prove that benefits can be delivered

E.g. For a)start ups who need b)a marketing resource to increase their visibility in the market, Marketing123 is an c)online, 24 hrs a day network of d)marketing professionals and self help resources who can answer your questions and provide fast solutions anytime, anywhere.

e)Marketing consultancies generally involve long term contracts and take time to show return, but Marketing123 f)lets you pay by the hour as and when you need us and gives a 100% money back guarantee if you're not completely satisfied. g)We've already helped over 700 start ups this year and 99% of our customers would recommend us to their friends as a one stop shop for all your marketing needs.

Value propositions are a great way of ensuring you and your employees are all clear on who your company is and what you do for your customers.  I would urge you to write one for each of your products/services.

One final tip. Once you've crafted your value proposition apply the 'so what?' test. Ask yourself whether what you've written describes real customer benefits and clearly states how you help customers solve their main problem. If not, keep tweaking until it does.

Why bother with social media?

We've all been sucked in, one way or another, to the brave new world of social media. For most small/mid sized companies, having a social media presence is generally top of their list, as both the problem and the solution to all their woes.

Before you rush to join the huddled masses though, make sure you know what you're trying to accomplish with social media, so you can measure your success or lack of it and hone your outreach accordingly.

So what should you be monitoring/doing to make the most of your social media push?

Facebook

- Wall posts
- Comments
- Likes

The more people who interact with your wall posts, the more visible and potentially viral, a post becomes. You should aim to both react to relevant posts in your business newsfeed and get your wall posts featured in other influential newsfeeds.

Twitter

- Look for relevant questions about you/your company/industry
- Reply to requests for information and support about your industry
- Monitor for complaints and feedback
- Look out for competitor mentions
- Follow influencers (find who they are via Wefollow)

Where possible say thank you, retweet, save to favourites, reply and connect with your potential clients.

LinkedIn

- Check LinkedIn Answers at least once a week
- Join relevant groups and contribute to their discussion groups

This tool is still primarily friend to those selling B2B, but everyone needs to network so don't rule it out if you're not in that space.

Google+

- Search keywords, product names etc to see what people are saying about your brand
- Ripples let you see your posts spread across Google+ who's sharing and influencing?
- Use the social analytic reports to measure +1's
- Watch out for new tools that Google+ adds around analytics

The jury is still out, but love it or hate it Google+ has a following and your potential customers are likely to be part of it.

Pinterest

- Use tools such as PinReach and PinPuff to view engagement and influence levels
- Use it to build a community around your brand
- Ask for repins (add a price tag to your pins and a link back to your website)
- Add your website link to pins to boost your SEO

As the newest, yet fastest growing social media site people you can benefit from showcasing the personality behind your brand.

Blogosphere

- Track relevant blog articles
- Read the comments and jump in if you have something valuable to add
- Do any of the articles written about you link back to your website?

Blogs are here to stay and now that RSS feeders condense what people choose to read, the opportunity for pinpointing your ideal customer or target market, is huge.

As ever, knowing who your customers are and which social media tools they use will help you to build the right presence in the right place.

Happy tweeting, pinning, liking etc. etc. etc.

10 principles of great content

1. It's not about you
2. Pick a hot topic and stay relevant
3. Be independent 
4. Support your story with facts, preferably data, better still if you generated the data
5. Use real life customer stories and reference third parties
6. Share what doesn't/didn't work. Negatives are news
7. Empathy and honesty with your audience at all times
8. Write with confidence but remember that credibility matters
9. Make it good enough to share
10. Keep it simple.  Communicate one idea at a time

What's trending on twitter today?

Social media guru Alicia Cowan recently tweeted that twitter trends could make good blog posts. What a great idea, I thought and then I looked to see what the twitter gods might inspire me with.

In London the tweeting public care about

#NickiNewAlbum
#CommonTattoos
Kim Kardashian & Kanye West Are DATING
#takeoveruk
Simon Cole
Happy Easter
We Love Gaga's New Car
Bustin Jieber Is Our Everything
Canning Town
Jim Marshall

In Glasgow it looked more like this

#asktherisk
#10ThingsThatILike
#TheApprentice
Samantha Brick
National Tell A Lie Day
Easter
RIP Jim Marshall
Kurt Cobain
CVA
D&P

A few hundred miles apart but thankfully Easter and Marshall amp appreciation provides common ground.

As the farside cartoon says 'same planet, different worlds.'

Happy Easter!

Is your marketing just sales prevention?

I am a 'seasoned' (read, old) Marketer. Decades ago when you wanted to make a sale, you had to first educate potential buyers about your product/service - what it was, what it did and why you'd be mad not to buy it.  Sellers had power and a sellers marketing had significant influence, because these were the days before social media.

Today, potential buyers educate themselves. They talk about your brand, they discuss their experiences, they poll for answers to their questions, reading the blogs and reviews along the way. What the seller has to say is almost irrelevant to the sale.

For marketing time and money to be well spent, you now need to concentrate on helping the buyer make their choice - making it as easy as possible to interact.

Checklist

1. Can they find you when they search? (are you both using the same search terms?) 
2. Does your website answer their questions? (or is it a just a product features pitch?) 
3. Is there an easy checkout/download/try now process? (or is this 10 clicks & all your personal details required?) 
4. Do you know what your current reputation is and are you fixing/building on this with your marketing? 
5. Are you helping them to know that their money will be well spent i.e. do you address all they can expect post sale or is your marketing solely pre sales focused?

Without getting into the minds of your customers, your marketing is likely to be preventing rather than promoting sales.  Would you buy from you?

Alicia Cowan/Keren Lerner Workshop Review

Seminar Review: Social Media for Business - can you afford to ignore it?

As a break with tradition, todays blog was written by the very talented Eileen MacCallum (www.aweebirdie.com).  

Last week I really joined the conversation. That's to say I went along to one of the workshops run by social media guru Alicia Cowan (http://www.aliciacowan.com/) and equally clued-up designer Keren Lerner from Top Left Design (www.topleftdesign.com).

The day-long seminar aimed to demystify the main social media channels for the common business bod. So folk from all walks of work followed the cheery Muppet-themed (we know, that's why we're here) directions down to the comfy basement of a North London office.

Both prolific tweeters and bloggers, Keren and Alicia talked us knowledgeably through LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging and You Tube (no Facebook due to time constraints), rounding up with a bite-size guide to planning your social media strategy.

Along the way they shared a ton of practical tips, best practices, information sources and tools to make joining the big social media conversation that bit simpler.

Attendees ranged from complete novices to recent enthusiasts. When someone asked, "What is SEO?" they got a relaxed, jargon-free explanation. Another had concerns about how best to manage the degree of personal exposure regular social media interaction can involve. (Solution: dive in but always keep your business goals in mind.) Worries about time-munching Twitter habits were countered with advice on planning and tools, from Buffer (http://bufferapp.com/) to Listorious (http://listorious.com/).

I've had my toe in the social media sea for a wee while now and am keen to improve my online marketing. What I gained was a fuller understanding of each platform's role, plus plenty of practical advice to help me manage it all more effectively.

The volume of information was perhaps bamboozling for the beginner - I did see some eyes go a bit fruit-machine by the end of the day - but regular breaks for energy-boosting cupcakes and some light networking helped ease the pace.

As most of us know, social media is all about sharing. Over this informal fact-packed day Alicia and Keren shared all the stuff they know, to help us share the stuff we know, and I for one left feeling all fired up to chat. #timeandmoneywellspent