Differentiating Yourself

By Alice R. Heiman

Are you selling marketing services, insurance, real estate, financial services, printing, web design, telephone systems, office products, staffing, internet access? How do you stand out in a crowd? With so much competition these days how are you acquiring new customers and retaining the ones you have?

The key is to build Relationships, understand, educate, help them choose the best solution and then continue to serve and educate.
In order to differentiate yourself you have to figure out how you are different from others who sell the same thing and then position yourself that way. So you have to know why people buy from you.

Why do people buy from you anyway? You need to know what the reasons are so that you can capitalize on them. Salespeople often have a long list of product features and benefits that differentiate their products. Unfortunately, none of these may be the reason that people actually buy from them. There are usually only two or maybe three key reasons and those reasons are unique to each customer. Find those reasons.

Know why people buy from you, don’t guess. Ask your customers. They can tell you exactly why they chose you over the competition and why they stay. Typically it has a lot to do with you, the relationship you build and the education and service you provide. Since few companies have truly unique products and services the way to stand out is by understanding the customer and serving their needs.
Once you know why people buy find more people like them. Target your market. Don’t try to sell to everyone. Find the group that you can relate to, are most knowledgeable about and most comfortable with. This will make selling much easier. Specialize in the product or service that best serves your target market and lead with that. Trying to sell everything to everybody will not help you stand out from the crowd.

Many salespeople bombard prospects with information. Instead stand out by asking good questions and learning about their needs then match the features and benefits of your product with their needs. You will move the sale forward much faster this way and learn more quickly when it is not a good fit before too much time is spent on either side.
If things are moving forward educate. Remember your job is to help the customer make a good decision on the best solution, which may be yours. Chances are the prospect needs more education on your industry and possible solutions in general. Find sources of information and experts on the topic to help them learn. Your job is to help them make the best possible decision even if that excludes your product or service.

Know your competition. Who do you compete with? What are their prices? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Do they offer something you don’t? How is their customer service and follow up? Although you want to say as little as possible about your competition and never want to bash them in any way you need to be prepared to answer questions from prospective customers. Sometimes the truth is that you have nothing over the competition as far as features, benefits or price but you can match them and you know the prospect’s industry, understand their needs and are focused on helping them reach their goals. The truth is sometimes people make their final decision based on the fact that they like you, but don’t take advantage of that. If you are not the best solution to their problem this could backfire on you.

Imagine telling someone that your solution is not the best for them and referring them to someone that can provide what they need. The credibility you build will last a long time.
If after educating the prospect your solution is still the best then follow up and deliver what was promised. Be persistent but don’t be a pest. If you have several competitors the ones who don’t follow up will be gone. I can’t tell you the amount of business that is lost for lack of follow up. Standing out in the crowd means having excellent follow up. If you are afraid to follow up because you are not sure if the prospect is still interested then ask. Perhaps they are just busy or need to communicate a different way. Communicating in their preferred method is another way to standout. If you can’t reach them by phone, ask how they prefer to be contacted.

Build great relationships, ask great questions, know your competition, be prepared to educate, follow up and you will find yourself standing out from the crowd.

Old Brand, New Tricks

I caught this posting on Marketing Profs, and thought really relevant and well written.  So much so, that I’m going to take the lazy route, and simply repost it here for your reading pleasure.

Good news: You don’t have to lose sight of your brand’s tried-and-true persona to participate in the quest for deeper engagement at the new social sites. Just think of the social-media generation as a silver-dish serving of people who already want to talk to you; you just need to make them feel comfortable doing it. Easier said than done? Not necessarily. Here are a couple of older brands that are getting it right:

Sharpie, well past pushin’ 40, managed to tap into an enthusiastic user culture in a way we’re pretty sure no other pen brand has. Its Sharpie Uncapped gallery enables fans far and wide to express, in vivid (and permanent!) color, how they incorporate the inky wonders into their creative undertakings.

Think about the number of years kids have been using Sharpies to scribble on jeans, decorate casts and prettify their Converse tennies. Now there’s a fun place to show all that off? Score!

Little Debbie, who first made the scene in the 1960s, is using flickr, Twitter, Facebook and blog outreach to promote a cupcake Share-a-Thon this fall. A series of Smart cars demonstrate Little Debbie’s commitment to the eco-cause, and are also outfitted like the cupcakes themselves. Thus far, the aging mark has done a tasty job of reminding fresh generations of its relevance.

Now, not all instances of successful social-media outreach are even intentional. Case in point: When gay couples were finally permitted to wed in Vermont, 31-year-old ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s celebrated by renaming its Chubby Hubby ice cream Hubby Hubby within the state. Thousands of blog posts and twitter updates later, they realized they had a winner.

How’d these old-timers manage to wow a fresh-faced crowd? At ad:tech Chicago this year, reps from Ben & Jerry’s and Sharpie said they felt social media was just in their DNA. That is to say, the key to winning hearts hasn’t changed with time or tech: It’s still about communicating a message in a relatable way.

What are your thoughts on this?  Is social media quickly becoming an integral strategy for these and other brands in the market?  What kind of social media integration have you experienced that you think is a good use of the media?

Simple Tips For Renewable Energy Companies To Build Their Brand.

As we’ve all experienced more in this economy than in any other recently – you can’t make a sale unless the value of your product or service is clearly understood.  This is especially true of the rising “green” sector of our market, as many new and emerging companies struggle to find new prospects and buyers that are willing to spend their precious budget on a new product or service.

We believe that nearly everyone prefers to be considered environmentally conscious.  In this current recession, the costs of “going green” and the confusion about how to actually do it is just enough for most consumers to throw their hands up, and surrender to their comfortable habits. This is just one reason it can be a real challenge for sustainably oriented renewable energy companies to clearly market their value today, and gain enough momentum to launch their product or service line.

Add the perception that their products usually come at a higher cost to what is often a very complex set of industry related language, and you’ve got a formula that turns new consumers away in frustration and fear.

From our experience, many emerging renewable energy companies speak in their “native tongue”, using a high degree of acronyms and technical language without simply communicating their basic values.  If they can’t provide a convincing brand message to their buyers about their economic and personal value, it’s doubtful they’ll make or continue sales.

So what can renewable energy companies do to overcome these initial challenges in perception?  Here are a few tips they might consider…

Get Local

While we’d encourage any renewable energy company to maintain their own corporate online presence through a company website, we’d encourage them to also offer individual landing pages that show their products locations and installation.  Not only will this help with their online search engine rankings, but it provide a local portal for people looking for their products in their own backyard, and helps provide new and existing customers with a sense that the company is a community entity, and not a cold, distant corporation.

Speak Your Customer’s Language

As many renewable energy companies are founded by technical and academic professionals, the language they’re familiar with often becomes the messaging to their public – and this intimidating form of communication can lead new customers to leave their sales process before buying.  To be truly successful, you need to present your information to the public in a user-friendly way that easy for your potential customer to engage and relate to on all levels.

Don’t Just Advertise, Build Conversations

Social media channels provide one of the best platforms for engaging new customers and prospects in an ongoing conversation that can help leverage leads into sales.  Current customers can serve as testimonials, and share their passion about the renewable energy’s product or services to new contacts.  We highly recommend that renewable energy companies use social media in their overall marketing strategy – while giving traditional media its due as an integral part of any campaign.

Measure Success

Whatever initiatives any renewable energy campaign undertakes, it’s critical that every effort, every channel, every initiative have some form of tracked measurement.  Without a method to know exactly who is responding to your campaign, and why – you’ll not be able to make the needed adjustments to fine tune the campaign for ongoing success.

Those are just some very basic considerations – there are many more.

What has your experience been in trying to work with renewable energy companies recently?  What’s been your impression of their products or services?  We’d like to know about your experience in this sector, so that we can help this emerging economy grow faster for all our benefit.  Please share your insights  with us!

Teaching Social Media

I was asked by one of our SmartBrand associates, Alice Heiman, to be one of several smart panel members including Michael Clawson, Camilla Downs and Dave Barnhart to present our experience and suggestions about how social media can help you grow your business and sales at this year’s Confab USA conference.

It was a very interesting, lively topic that encompassed three hours of varying perspectives and ideas to an audience of consultants and managers at the Silver Legacy Resort Casino here in Reno.  Our presentation will be shared online soon, which I’ll link here when it’s uploaded for reference.

From this experience, I confirmed my basic belief about social media – one size (and approach) will never “fit all”.  As unique as every brand is, whether a personal, professional or corporate entity, social media requires a very targeted, customized approach in alignment with the brand’s target market.  More importantly, social media is just one aspect of an comprehensive, integrated marketing campaign.  If the basics of that brand marketing aren’t in place, social media (for all it’s power and glory), will make little to no sense.

Presenting as a team to help this active group of consultants and managers was a challenge.  How can you provide some sense of strategy to a room of professionals who may not share the same end goal?  It seemed more helpful to simply provide some tactical information to them, and answer specific questions as they were asked.  And they were asked in droves.

Our panel did a terrific job of making sense from a variety of perspectives – while trying to solve a wide range of challenges from the very basic, to the very advanced.  It was really an honor and pleasure to be seated with these pros.

So my question to you is…how would you handle this kind of presentation?  What have you found helpful in providing good information to a diverse range of audience participants on a topic as broad ranging as social media?  Your insights are always appreciated here on SmartBlog.

Ten “Easy” Questions About Social Media

I was asked to participate in a panel presentation today about social media with two other savvy individuals – Tommy Inglis of Xpositioning and Dr. Bret L. Simmons  from Positive Organizational Behavior.  The three of us sat in front of a fairly young crowd – I’d say 40-50 people total, with a daunting task.  Answering these ten questions:

1. What are the best tactics to use?
2. How do I measure the effectiveness of social media?
3. Where do I start?
4. How do I manage the social balance?
5. What are the best sites and tools out there?
6. How do I make the most of my available time?
7. How do I find and focus my efforts on my target audience?
8. How do I convert my social media marketing efforts into tangible results?
9. How do I cohesively tie different social media efforts together?
10. Does social media marketing work, and if so, how effective is it?

Each of us approached these questions from our own, unique perspectives.  Tommy’s work with Xpositioning is very focused on social media for businesses.  Dr. Simmons, as you can see from his site, is an accomplished advocate of leadership and management skills and processes, while I think I represented a more overall marketing-centric approach to social media.

What fascinated me was our agreement on so many key levels.  First, establishing a strong brand platform and message before venturing out to any social media campaign.  And secondly, tailoring that campaign to very specific markets with a consistency in messaging and process to build a community around the brand.

I had to seek a bit of clarification for a few of them in order to position my answer correctly, as some of the questions are very broad in scope.  A few terms, like “tactics” could mean quite a few things – but our discussion helped clarify the context of the question itself.

All this lead to my wondering…how would you answer these basic ten questions about social media today?

Building Your Brand’s Image Library Is A Smart Investment

Especially in today’s challenging economy, brand image plays a key role in building both awareness and customer loyalty.  Marketing firms like ours are asked to do more with less budget, and find more creative ways to build brands through multiple channels – especially social media.  But the key to our team’s success often lies beyond budgetary constraints to focus on the core values and relevancy of the brand itself.

How do we help our clients position themselves as a “gotta-have-it” brand?  There’s no single key to success, but one important element is building a library of images that can be used across all channels – including television, print campaigns, direct mail, tradeshows and key social networks.

The right photographs, graphics and illustrations have always been a key feature of any brand’s success.  In today’s economy, however, building a library of images for any brand has often been put aside as an “extra” that isn’t required at this time – and that’s a mistake that doesn’t need to be made.  Here are a few considerations you might think about when building a library of images for your business or product:

1. Make sure the images you choose support your brand’s positioning. If you’re not precisely clear on what the position is in your customer’s thoughts, take the time to find out before you buy or design any images for your campaign.  Once you’ve discovered how your brand is percieved, selecting the right photographs, or better yet – having them shot specificially for your needs, is a wise investment to build a library you can work with throughout the year.

2. Work constantly to build your library of images. Keeping your messaging fresh and interesting is key to staying relevant in this current economy.  Consider incorporating images that convey a bit of humor, hope and humanity.  Connecting with your customer’s sense of struggle to buy your product may just be the thing that motivates them to make the purchase.

3. Target your images to specific markets. Not all images will work for all audiences – and you need to consider what will resonate with every specific target market.  Don’t assume that one campaign will catch the attention of different market segments.

4. Invest in custom imagery – it’s worth it. So many clients assume that custom photography is going to be too expensive. Far from it – great photography can be acquired today at very reasonable prices from a pool of incredibly talented photographers.  And once you’ve secured the rights to your photos with your provider, you can rest assured that your using them won’t require additional licensing fees as with many stock photography sources.  More importantly, you’ll be sure your images are yours alone – and won’t be used by your competitor.

As b-to-b marketers make the case for spending money on custom photography, they should consider the history of the brand. It is important for all companies, large and small alike, to carve out the best imagery for their brand. It’s even more important that well-known brands rich in history, such as AT&T, Nike, or American Express, rely on custom versus stock imagery to create the right connections. These companies simply have more to lose by making a poor decision around photography.

5. Once you’ve built your library – keep it organized and secure. Be sure to create back-up copies of all your images, and catalog them in a way that helps you find what your looking for with key search words.

Certainly, every brand is struggling to maintain existing customers while connecting to new prospects.  With a bit of planning, you can build the kind of brand resonance to do both today – and one cost effective way to do that is by building and organizing your digital assets.

What have you done that’s been successful in this area?  What challenges have you faced in building your digital assets that could be a help to others trying to do the same?

Smart Strategy For Any Marketing Campaign

In today’s pressured rush to maintain and attract buyers, it’s easy to overlook the basics.  Because of the need to generate immediate revenue, or getting caught up in the excitement and momentum of a good idea, the basics of the marketing process are overlooked.  Jumping into a campaign without consideration for the fundamental marketing process can have devastating effects.  Here’s a brief remnder of what you should consider before launching your next marketing effort.

First… TEST your idea.  Perhaps even suggest a couple of different strategies to a sample group from your target market. Ask them to compare one against the other, and give you some honest feedback.  For example, if you’re going to launch a print campaign in your local paper, try out a few alternative headlines first.  Or perhaps one or two alternative images in that ad if you’re confident the headline invites the reader to learn more about your company or product. Whatever the outcome of the feedback you receive, you’ll improve your message and set yourself on a path toward greater response – and that’s especially important for your marketing budget today.

Secondly, be sure you include some way to TRACK the response to your marketing outreach.  There are many ways to effectively do this by including a special offer or specific response to every ad placed throughout your campaign.  You’ll certainly want to ask every prospect that responds to your marketing how they learned about you, and more importantly, why they decided to call or email.  What caught their attention first?  The headline?  The images used?  This is valuable feedback that most new clients, and even existing ones, are happy to provide – especially if you can provide some incentive for them to participate in your formal, or informal survey.  One of the biggest mistakes we find with our clients is their assuming they know what’s working and what’s not – without ever asking their market.  While many see this as an “extra step” to their campaign, the feedback you’ll get is invaluable, and it helps you align your brand with your market in a much more meaningful way that will result in greater customer loyalty over the long run.

Finally, it’s important to be willing to REVISE your messaging based on the feedback you receive.  This may require minor, or major adjustments to your messaging or channel mix.  Too many times, we fall in love with our own ideas, and forget that marketing and brand positioning isn’t about what we like – but about what our target market’s needs and opinions.

These are simple steps that anyone can practice that won’t add a penny to your marketing budget – but will provide you with insights to your campaign efforts to make them more effective.  In today’s tight marketing budget environment, we all need to do a better job investing our dollars wisely.

What kind of testing, tracking and revisions have you done for your marketing that has worked for you?  Can you share some examples with us?  If you’re having trouble deciding how to test, track, and revise your campaigns to maximize your marketing budget, please let us know – we can help.

Getting SEO Results With Social Media

~Written by guest blogger, Mike Van Houten of JM Studio ~

As social media continues to implant itself as a permanent communication tool in tens of millions of lives, it provides the opportunity for more eyeballs to reach your brand. It also raises many questions regarding how much time to devote to each media platform, which ones are more important than others, and whenever I have a discussion with a client or fellow “geek” who’s interested in the topic, the debate of SEO vs. Social Media eventually ensues.

Which is more important? How should you split up your time reaching out to people online? The answer is simple…in a true multi-faceted marketing campaign; search engine optimization and social media cannot be separated. It’s a setup for failure or at the very best, a mediocre return on the time invested, if you perform one or the other but not both. Here is why:

Let’s use SmartBrand as an example (because it’s a neutral topic), a company that uses social media to the extreme. First we’ll look at social media in terms of branding results in Google.

Take a look at the search results below for the search ‘smartbrand’:

While the top result is SmartBrand’s main web site, which should be the case, 5 other results are directly from social media sites like Ning, Flikr, Twitter, You Tube, and the like.

So in essence, utilizing social media IS search engine optimization, if carried out properly, and if you optimize each of your social media platforms as one cohesive marketing campaign that utilizes the same keywords and varying optimized descriptions (such as in YouTube video descriptions, or Flikr gallery descriptions and photo captions), you’ll ultimately create a funnel effect, not only exposing your brand, but driving traffic to one source.

You might be surprised that people actually follow the link in your Twitter profile to your primary web presence, or click a link in someone’s YouTube profile. It’s a double exposure win-win situation – if optimized correctly it’s exposure on the front page of Google from multiple social media platforms for your target keywords, as well as exposure in each of the media platforms themselves.

It wasn’t always this way. Any reputable SEO’er who is obsessed with the topic will tell you that updates to Google only within the past year started giving more weight to links and keywords embedded in social media sites. Particularly with the “Vince” update. Google didn’t pay much attention to YouTube videos, nor embedded YouTube videos in its primary web search results until it acquired YouTube.

A video’s ‘page’ in YouTube can carry page rank, if people link to it as a valuable resource.
 Getting each platform as valuable resource.

What kind of success or failures have you had with your SEO attempts through social media?

______________________________

Mike Van Houten is the owner and interactive media designer of JM Studio.
JM Studio designs sites with a user-centered approach with a philosophy that places the person, your web visitor, at the center of your web experience.  Mike is also the author of northern Nevada’s #1 blog about development in and around downtown Reno: Downtownmakeover.com

Smart, Savvy Social Media Tips From Alice Heiman

Our good friend and affiliate, Alice Heiman, has kindly offered to allow us to re-post some of her smart, savvy sales tips here on SmartBrand’s blog to help our readers maximize their marketing investment.  After all – a great marketing strategy must ultimately result in increased sales, and it takes a synchronized effort from both marketing and sales to make that happen for any business today.

Here’s Alice’s insightful tips on social media for your business:

To be successful using social media to promote your business take the following steps:

1.      Take a look at your current plan and review the ways you are currently reaching your target market.  Ask yourself, what’s working and what’s not.

2.      Think about your ideal customer, what social media are they using?  Look at the demographics of the users of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and the others and see if it matches.  Ask your current customers what social media they use.

3.      Think about your image and the messaging you want to use to communicate on social media.

4.      Make an editorial calendar for what you will post.  Good content is the key.  Push out content on a regular basis and then in between you can promote your events or specials.

5.      Determine who is going to be responsible for posting.  It needs to be done consistently.

6.      Review and evaluate the results of what you have executed.  Make changes to your strategy based on this information.

They key to successfully promoting yourself or a business with social media is to have a plan that integrates with your overall sales and marketing strategy and enhances that in some way.  Know what your goals are and measure the results.

Utilizing social media properly is a lot of work and in many companies becomes a full time job.  There are many companies you can outsource to and I recommend that if you can afford it.  Just make sure they develop a plan in conjunction with your current sales and marketing plan.

Cashing In On Kindness

At first, it seemed like a tried-and-true idea – aligning a shopping mall brand with good will.  In today’s tough economy, the standard “come to our mall” pitch wouldn’t likely work; especially in light of the fact that a much larger destination with highly recognizable brand name stores was about to open in the same community.

“Through ‘Kindness Is Your Currency,’ we will reward people who already spend time and money to support organizations in our community,” said Larry Hunt, Property Manager of The Summit. “But more importantly, we want to encourage others to be kind as well. These are challenging times and we want people to focus on the positive, get out and help each other.”  The campaign could be monitored through their “Kindness Is Your Currency” website, a Facebook page, twitter account and “numerous Reno blogs”.

A shopping mall dedicating its resources to create a campaign that encourages and acknowledges random acts of kindness?  Shocking, in a way, given the tough economic climate we’re all facing – let alone the advancement of real competition in the retail market locally.

I applaud The Summit for engaging their agency to do something different that might have a positive effect on us all.  The launch of their “Kindness Is Your Currency” campaign was both brave and innovative.

But then came the monetary payoffs for this random kindness:

They were never shy about this pay-off aspect of the campaign, and made it perfectly clear at the onset that not only is kindness a currency, but that you could be rewarded with shopping incentives for engaging acts of kindness in your daily life.

“Karma Cards” were  issued to individuals “caught in the act” of kind deeds.  These Karma Cards, unsurprisingly are retail marketing mechanisms to drive traffic to their retailers: 15% off coupons at Dillard’s, etc.  In addition, they also served as “drawing tickets” for final prizes that include The Summit gift cards, a top prize of $3,000, two $1,000 prizes and two $500 prizes.

So there you have it.  Kindness is apparently a physical currency as well.  Be kind to your fellow wo/man, and you might be rewarded with cash and prizes.  What kind of message is that about those acts of kindness that go unrewarded?  What motivation might inspire new acts of kindness based on the desire to be recognized?

As an avid supporter of non-profits, with a deep personal appreciation for the rules of Karma, I’m conflicted about this whole retail manipulation of something that should be ingrained in our personalities – and not positioned as a promotional campaign for a shopping mall.

While they may have their retail oriented hearts in the right place – why is it necessary to physically reward anyone with shopping money for something we should all do as part of our daily lives without compensation?  Doesn’t it take a bit away from the Pay It Forward philosophy that the act is the reward itself?

If I follow the logic, the reason I may now engage in a random act of kindness is in hope that I’ll be recognized on the campaign’s site and be physically rewarded with cash?  What does that say about those acts of kindness that are done without expectation of reward and return?  Granted – this is retail, and you can’t simply have a “do good” campaign out there for the sake of promoting goodness – there must be a financial payoff.  But is that a smart marketing position for a retail mall to take, however altruistic its intent may have been?

A shopping facility of this size and nature must spend its marketing and advertising dollars wisely; and they’ve dedicated a great deal of budget and energy to positioning themselves as the “kindness” place to shop.  But I’m concerned that this kind of positioning may not be sustainable – and kindness may run its campaign course when the chill of the holiday shopping season arrives.  Will kindness be tossed aside for the consumer dollar then?  And if it’s not sustainable – does it make The Summit appear as though they leveraged good deeds for the sake of short-term retail sales?

As I mentioned, I’m conflicted here, and welcome your thoughts and perspective on this effort – whether positive or negative.  What do you think about this campaign?