How Branding Your Company Can Make You or Break You

You may have heard that it’s important to keep your brand in tact when referring to your business. Well, that is true.  You may have also heard that in this economy one wrong move…and your done.

While all of this is very true (and a little scary), there is help! You have to think about your brand and how to keep it consistent over many different forms of media without causing alarm on any of those forums. Make a decision early on as to who you want to be known for and how you can

Taking a roll of the dice with social media for business

I have been off the scene for awhile as far as blogging goes, but that is a good thing for me, it means that I have been a busy bee. What I would like to do is share more life experiences with you as I have learned quite a bit about the corporate and private business regarding social media marketing. Have you ever wondered why a particular business isn’t on Facebook? How about Twitter? Well, over the last few months, I have been helping small businesses and a few large ones understand the value of social media and how it can improve their bottom line. The results have been very interesting to say the least.

Case Study #1

Small Business starting off. Wants to get brand recognition and thinks they can do it via email blasts in one of those “Free” services. (I know…this one drove me nuts).

When the president of this company asked me how I could help him with his email blasts, I asked him what he currently is doing. He had subscribed to a free service that allowed him to send email blasts, but only a few at a time. He wanted to know what I thought about paying a service to send his email blasts. First question I had for him was “What’s your website look like?” He had one, but it too was with one of the “Free Services” that offer template style websites. All of this is fine, but when you want to get the word out to the masses and appear to be a viable company, you have to

Is your marketing lacking creativity? Try using a creative brief!

If it doesn’t sell – it isn’t creative

First develop a creative brief.  A creative brief is a report detailing out:

• Target Audience
• Objectives/Strategies
• Product Positioning Statement
• Obstacles/Barriers
• Action

Good creative briefs help everyone.  A creative brief will show the 3 major benefits that matter to customers (the way customers think, act and feel from the product).  Historical results should be in a creative brief if it is a similar product that has been done before. Characteristics of what the customers want and need to change should be included in the creative brief.

Science tells us that large purchases are made with 80% emotions and 20%

Getting smart with your PURLs

It’s best for your PURL call to action to be more of a tease. I will give you an example of a piece that I mailed recently with the theme based on the NBC game show “Deal or No Deal.”

On the mailer which was a postcard, I used a picture of a briefcase that said “Please go to visit your PURL (Personalized URL) for a chance to win the contents of case No. 13” This is a good call to action one might think – but you can’t stop here. You’ve got to put even more. So next I say “When you get to your personalized URL you’ll see what’s inside case #13” This will create enough interest and a buzz to get the client to visit their PURL and find out what the heck is in case #13?

So what did I do next? Well once they arrived at the “Microsite” they saw the contents of the case with a very creative microsite I designed that had the music from deal or no deal along with the banker in the background and I even had the whole stage as my layout. But I didn’t stop there. That really wasn’t the important part – THIS IS, so pay attention please! I only sent these mailers to people in my list that I knew were interested in what was in the case. The contents of the case was a hunting trip in the Texas area. The list went to people that lived in Texas and that were avid hunters. We also made sure that they were clients that were in the 80% range of making a purchase of the capital equipment that we were attempting to sell. So on the microsite there was an offer that read “Joe, please come to our office for an open house and purchase a particular machine at a very attractive price and also register for the contents of the case by filling out the form on the microsite.” The personalization doesn’t stop with the mailer – it continues on the microsite all the way down to the particular piece of equipment that we already know they are interested in. Whether it’s a widget “A” “B” or “C” we can switch out the widget with variable printing an variable data on the microsite as well.

The only way to win the contents of the case is to actually show up at the office and attend the open house. Once they come to the open house, our goal is to sell them the high dollar capital piece of equipment.

Tracking back to the PURL is simple, as soon as a client clicks on their PURL an alert is sent to both the salesperson and the sales assistant so that the sales person can immediately contact the client and make communication to get them more interested in the product. My research has shown that if you contact a client while they are on your website within the first 5 minutes, you have an 80% chance of having good communication. However, if you wait 20 minutes those chances go down to 5%.

So what do we do with all the data? Well, its very cool actually, we can learn how often they visit the site, whether they forward the site on to someone else, or if they move from page to page if we’ve built a microsite that has multiple pages. So we can tell their interests very easily. PURLS can help you determine in a short matter of time what your clients needs and wants are without being invasive.