Marketing: How Subjective Is It?

by | Aug 27, 2013 | Advertising, Branding, Creative, Latest, Marketing

The real question is “should marketing be subjective?” Through years of creating concepts and designs, I have realized when you ask someone their opinion they will give it to you… whether they are qualified or not.

Most people either like something or don’t. It doesn’t matter if it’s a priceless painting like the Mona Lisa or their kid’s artwork hanging on the fridge. So the Mona Lisabottom line is, if people don’t like something there’s nothing that anyone can do to change their mind.

It would seem then,  pretty tough to sell a product with a marketing position or concept that doesn’t resonate with the market. It’s even harder to come up with a marketing and advertising campaign that helps people make decisions on whether they should buy or not.

Marketing is like art

When it comes to marketing concepts, like art, everyone’s a critic. And like art, it’s not always easy to defend when the art you’ve just created is being criticized.  It’s not like mathematics where it’s either right or wrong. 2+2 is 4 no matter which way you look. But marketing is different because it boils down to the way people think and feel.

Is marketing subjective? Is the creation of a marketing campaign purely subjective? Is it really based on the reaction of the client who tells you for the umpteenth time,  ‘so and so doesn’t like it”.

Marketing behind the scenes

Not everyone seems to appreciate what goes on behind the scenes in marketing. Maybe you’ve heard: “Whoever came up with that idea? My kid can do better.” But marketing shouldn’t be evaluated on likeability alone.

Marketing is a critical business function to attract customers. Is it realistic then to leave marketing to chance? It’s true  how we view elements of marketing can be subjective. I like that packaging. I don’t like that commercial. But what many don’t understand, fail to understand, forget, ignore or just don’t care is that marketing  is strategic. It doesn’t matter what you like, your wife likes or your dog likes. A good marketing campaign first requires investigation and research.  A SWOT analysis is key. A  definition of target market is only the first step. We need to learn  about our target market and what makes them tick. We identify what we want to accomplish. We anticipate how the consumer will react to our objective.

And through all this we are cognizant of  the 4ps of marketing.

Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product to our customers. We do this by positioning our product to find its place and stand out amongst all the noise and babble. We create brand awareness and we sustain that awareness throughout the campaign. In order to create a marketing campaign, we capture marketing insight to determine how best to connect with customers. We build a strong brand and communicate its value. We communicate consistently. We connect with our customers and deliver a message that communicates value. We are conscious to protect our brand. We monitor on a continuous basis. And in the end, our metrics tell us whether we were successful or not in cold, hard numbers.

Those numbers are the facts. They are indisputable.

So maybe, marketing isn’t so subjective after all.

Should you Create a Personal Brand?

by | Aug 21, 2013 | Branding, Business Success, Latest, Marketing

Big companies spend lots of money and effort to build their brands. Brands help their products stand out. Microsoft, Walmart, Volkswagen. We get it. We know what they do.

But what about building a personal brand. Can building a personal brand help us to become recognized. Can a personal brand help build our careers? Build brand loyalty…to us?

Each one of us has a personal brand whether we consciously created it or not.

Our personal brand is the summary of what defines us as a unique and distinctive individual.

This summary is used when you talk about yourself to others. Or when others talk about you. More importantly when others talk about you… you should be memorable! Wouldn’t you rather someone say “call Joe, he can fix that” rather than “call what was his name… he’s the one that ….…pause…what was his name …?

Unless you want to be called ‘What was his name’, don’t leave your personal brand to chance. Personal branding is a way to make a name for yourself and to sell your talent and your skills. It highlights your values and enhances your reputation.

A strong, solid personal brand will make you stand out from the rest. It will help you when applying for a job, building a business or networking with new friends or associates. A powerful brand defines you at all times and lets others know who you are.

Your personal brand is an investment

When you invest in your personal brand you invest for a lifetime. And like any strong investment, with the right foundation and careful planning it will continue to grow. As it grows it encompasses your values and accomplishments and defines the person you are at any given moment in time.

Your personal brand is based on the thoughts and perception of others. That’s the beauty. Building a personal brand is your opportunity to construct that image. How would you like others to think of you? You have control and you can decide what image you want to project and work on that image.

Name it to claim it

Take the time to consider how you want to be perceived. Be clear about who you are and who you are not. This will become your mantra, your raison d’être. Every action, every activity should reflect that person. Focus your message on who you are and what you have to offer.

Personal branding isn’t easy but it can and will bring impressive results. Just ask Oprah! But no, seriously…if you want to know how to go about building a brand, click here.

How to Leverage From Facebook Marketing

by | Aug 15, 2013 | Advertising, Latest, Social Media

Most Facebook marketers quickly realize that things aren’t as easy as some of these web articles make them seem. There is a lot of nuance to every different type of engagement method. So when you read about leveraging something in your favor, you need more than the gist – you need to get to the meat of the matter. Below, you will read about a few different ways to find leverage on Facebook, along with practical applications you can implement immediately into your campaign.

Different Ways to Find Leverage on Facebook

Facebook Ads

There are many different paid categories of ads on Facebook for a reason: They work! Of course, using Facebook ads can be difficult for beginners and even for individuals who don’t quite understand how to target their intended market. While it is true that paying more money can help increase your reach, it’s also true that ads won’t work all on their own – as in, they don’t simply fall into the pockets of your audience without some guidance. So it becomes a game of leverage here. How can you use Facebook’s ad options to leverage your campaign? Out of the multiple types of ad formats Facebook offers, let’s speak quickly about Page Post ads. These ads come in six different varieties: Photos, videos, questions, status updates, events, and links. A picture ad, for example, can take up much more real estate on a person’s News Feed than other ads, and they appear on both the mobile and desktop version of Facebook. They also earn a 14% higher ROI than normal domain ads, according to a Nanigans study based on 975 million impressions, and you can target this ad to its intended audience through a variety of Facebook tools. There are three things to keep in mind when using Page Post ads:

  • Always be engaging: Engagement is paramount here. You want to ensure that you’re releasing eye-popping, interesting photos (charts, memes, infographics, specific product images, etc) that really capture a user’s attentions.
  • Always use concise messaging: Think of text on your Page Post ad like text on a mobile ad. You want to get to the point as quickly as possible. Say what you need to within the first 90 characters of the ad. Use hot-button words that are niche-appropriate; list dollar amounts, guarantees, or other compelling messages to draw attention without being vague. Get right to the point.
  • Always test multiple ads: Using a third-party application will allow you to test multiple ad formats. Even though you’re going to change ads consistently, you still need to test how ads perform before you launch them on a wider basis. Run multiple versions of an ad with variations (demographics like age range, location, different keywords, etc) to see which works best for you.

Embedded Posts Embedded Posts is a relatively new feature launched by Facebook which will allow page posts to actually be embedded on other websites. These third-party embedding features are very similar to other sites like Twitter and Instagram. CNN was one of the first to jump on this, conducting a poll about Bradley Manning on Facebook and posting the results on their main website. This type of embedding feature has huge implications for marketers in terms of leveraging the feature. How can this work out in your favor as a marketer? Well, a good example of this is taking a Facebook review you’ve received and embedding it on your website. If you have an informative post that’s very popular and engaging, or a Facebook post that has perhaps earned a lot of likes and shares that has more of a social context, you can spread out well beyond putting a Facebook button on your site and meld two sites together. This drives traffic back to Facebook and also allows Facebook participating from another site. Embedded posts obviously aren’t all the rage yet. But this is a free feature that you can easily use to your benefit. Facebook Hashtags Using Facebook for business is usually a low-cost and even fun way of conducting your business affairs. With Facebook hashtags, marketers on this site can now use the system made famous by Twitter and used by other social sites like Google+ to help categorize keywords and ultimately boost their presence. These hashtags (#) are basically like a DD system at the library, for lack of a better analogy. By having the # symbol in front of a word, it then gets categorized and becomes available in a search. So what was a simple “Hey, what’s up” post can now contain a hashtag keyword/phrase and become searchable. When you’re planning on using hashtags for your Facebook content, be careful here not to get into Kobe Bryant territory, where every other word has a hashtag in front of it. Hashtags can be valuable weapons for you to use for your organic reach, or potentially even to add keywords and phrases to paid advertising. So make sure that you’re putting the hashtag on popular terms and words that are related to your market. You still have to exercise a marketer’s a approach here; it’s not all about using the most popular or unique hashtags to draw attention to yourself in an unrelated market. That’s just a wasted effort. EdgeRank To put it in simple terms, EdgeRank is Facebook’s algorithm that it uses for rating and sorting and displaying material. This is a very cutting-edge algorithm compared to others used by similar social sites. According to the main EdgeRank site, the algorithm can be understood as “the sum of edges,” and is made up of three separate aspects of content: Affinity, Weight, and Time Decay. To leverage EdgeRank while using Facebook, one has to play to the way the algorithm sorts material in order to increase visibility. For instance, Facebook has stated that 88% of all its engagement on-site happens via the News Feed. Leveraging EdgeRank can put you in more people’s News Feeds and ultimately boost your engagement. Sound simple enough? Well, it’s not as simple as using better keywords or posting better-quality, more interesting content that your audience will appreciate. Yes, you should definitely do that! But the fact of the matter is that your content may need to change dramatically. The idea here is to increase the number of likes and shares your material is receiving to boost its affinity and weight, which should stave off immediate decay. To increase the affinity and weight of any particular piece of content, you have to really amp up the content. You have to do certain things, such as:

  • Amazing people with content they love
  • Solving a specific problem
  • Offering tips and other useful information
  • Providing humor for people
  • Providing inspiration for people
  • Posting high-quality, unique content that’s not simple recycled

Graph Search As someone in the tech “know” and they may tell you that Graph Search not only has the potential to revolutionize Facebook, but also the entire ‘net in general. Now, whether this eventually becomes reality is beside the point. The important thing to focus on is leveraging Facebook’s Graph Search in order to boost your marketing – your engagement and ultimately your bottom line. Graph Search is different from typical SEO in that the former uses objects rather than keywords. Facebook’s unique searching method focuses on entities and relationships and how things fit together in a wider context, rather than just keyword X pointing to content Y. One of the best ways to leverage this searching potential is to provide objects – in this case, a node. Graph Search returns nodes, and if you have an on-location business, for example, its location should have a place node. Each one should. Nodes also pick up popularity through engagement on Facebook, so this is yet another instance where focusing on engagement can help you out tremendously in your marketing. Nodes that are connected directly and indirectly with users are more relevant, so this plays into your audience and also friends of your audience. Try optimizing your brand’s presence via the entire Internet via other sites, as well as offering incentives to customers in exchange for some type of engagement. What could work well here are contests and promotions, interesting status updates and other posts, discounts, solving a problem, etc. There are many ways to increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaign when advertising with Facebook. Use the examples listed above in order to boost your engagement and to bolster your campaign.

Cut Words: The Secret to Business Communication

by | Aug 13, 2013 | Business Success, Communications, Latest, Marketing

The Editor says “Cut” and in many cases rightly so. In advertising, professional writers must develop copy based on the media they write for. But you don’t have to be a copywriter to write strong copy in the day to day business arena. In verbal communication some words naturally roll off our tongues when we speak. Words that help make our point strong. Often, we don’t talk in full sentences when we speak: we stop, we repeat, we gesture. That’s fine as it all contributes to the delivery of our presentation. However,  in  silent communication such as writing reports, posts, articles and business communication, less is more for writing stronger and succinctly.

The following are four unnecessary words that will make your writing stronger. Eliminating them for your business writing, will make a definite improvement.

Cut “very” from your writing

Generally, when we want to make our point stronger we tend to add extra words. So, we write: this is “very” important or we have a “very” big problem. Or how about this?  One of the “very” first words to cut is very! Here’s a fun exercise taken from one of Mark Twain’s famous quotes:   Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be!

Adding the word “very” does not help make your point stronger. It should be cut. Think about it.  How much more stronger is  “this is important” to “this is very important”? You decide.

Cut “really” from your writing

Really? Do you mean that? Is really, “really” necessary? “Really” is in the same boat as “very” and should be cut. It sucks the power from your words. You are not Ed Sullivan and it is not a really big show. The use of the word really as an adjective  is the writer’s lazy way out. There are so many words in the English language to communicate the concept of proportion. Consider this. It was a “really” good meeting or it was a good meeting. Which sounds more professional? If you have to add the word really to the describe the meeting, maybe it really wasn’t that great a meeting!

Cut “just” from your writing

When you write “just” you “just” sound weak. I “just” wanted to follow-up. I’m “just” writing to see…  With email and now texting, understandably, our language has become more casual. The word “just” almost feels apologetic. You almost never need the word “just” in order to make your point. It often is redundant and adds nothing to the point you are trying to make.

Cut “thing” from your writing

This is one of my pet peeves. What exactly is a “thing”? When you write ‘thing’ it is not clear what you mean. For example, you write an email to your boss, “following  are 3 things that resulted from our meeting”.  In this case what does “thing” mean? Are they action items, are they observations, are they deadlines, what exactly are they? Things make the points irrelevant. It doesn’t add any credible to the issues you are detailing. The word “thing” has it’s place in writing, but not to illustrate or to establish a list or issues. Better and clearer to cut the word “thing” and state explicitly what it is that you mean.

Take five… let your writing be a cut above the rest.

As easy as it is to  include these four words in your writing, it’s equally (not just) as easy to remove them from your repertoire of writing. Before you press the send button, or make your word document into a PDF for general  viewing, take five minutes to review what you have written.  Use  technology to your advantage and “Find and Replace” to cut these 4 unnecessary words. After that,  your writing will be strong.

Brand Building: A Page from Steve Jobs’ Life Lessons

by | Aug 9, 2013 | Advertising, Branding, Creative, Latest

“Life can be much broader. You can embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.” – Steve Jobs

I was reading about the soon to be released movie “Jobs” with Ashton Kutcher and this quote jumped out at me. So much knowledge packed into one simple sentence.

I get it. I totally agree.  Jobs is a testimony to this philosophy. I can easily live vicariously through Jobs and let this knowledge spill into all areas of my life.  In this case, it captures my interest in marketing and brand building.  Brand can be much broader. You can embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. It’s about a brand’s life cycle and it being able to live in the now.

Embrace it

There’s much to be said about your product and positioning your brand.  But embracing it, now that’s where it gets  juicy.  Embracing is about nurturing and caring. It’s the point in your product life cycle where you have done your research. You understand what it takes to make your brand strong and resilient. You are not afraid to stand behind your brand and make your mark. You own your product. You protect it. And you embrace it.

Change it

For brands, change is not always good, but sometimes it’s necessary.. Knowing when to tweak an element of your brand or when to re-haul it takes a keen sense of timing and a marketing intuition. In most cases when brands (not products) need a total re-position, it’s because the brand hasn’t had the attention it deserves…for quite some time.

Improve it

Improving your brand is not about changing it. It is about realigning your brand to keep it current. It’s about paying attention  and having your brand live in the now. Improving how your brand is presented and keeping it relevant to the market ensures its success.  Staying on trend. Being fresh. In today’s marketing landscape, this is keeping current with social media and all that it has to offer.

Make your mark upon it

And here’s where Jobs was so distinctive. We can all agree he made his mark.  We are all familiar with the iconic apple symbol, the brand and all that it means, not only as a product, but as an experience and a promise.

Jobs left us the formula for life success that can easily be adopted to brand success

We can all follow in Jobs’ footsteps. He left us the formula albeit, for life.  To my way of thinking, Brand has a persona, and therefore, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, Brand has a life. We all refer to a brand and it’s product life cycle. Create a cohesive brand identity. Develop a unique identity that demonstrates your company’s personality. Make your product so impressive that people rush to do business with you and not your competition. Do whatever it takes to make it happen.