by Camille McClane | Mar 19, 2014 | Branding, Latest
Who you are and how other people see you are sometimes two completely different things. Have you ever been surprised by seeing a celebrity behave differently than you had them pegged? Their personal brand, the self they sell to the public, was convincing enough that it become more real than their genuine self.
You have your own personal brand, whether you like it or not, a way that you present yourself to the world, even unintentionally.
If you aren’t paying special attention to it then there is a good chance it’s floundering. Here are some tell-tale signs that your personal brand is in trouble.
You Don’t Network to Get Work – Networking events are a terrific way to meet new contacts and potential clients, in fact, that’s the entire point of these events. If you already know people and choose to give them the majority of your time, then you’re missing the point. If you don’t have a clear enough brand to sell and aren’t sure how to approach new people, you can rest assured you won’t learn about it by spending all your time talking to your current friends. Reach out and attach your face to a positive idea in another’s mind.
You Can’t Summarize Yourself – Quick: What is your personal brand? If you’re struggling to think of an immediate answer, you don’t have one. What is George Clooney’s brand? What is Donald Trump’s brand? Hillary Clinton? Even if you would describe these people differently than they would themselves, you almost certainly know what they’re about. They have a strong, specific personal brand. You need to know your own brand clearly if you ever expect anyone else to do the same. Find your skills, find your goals and bind them together into a plan of action centered around yourself and your public image.
You Don’t Take Care of Yourself – Nobody is suggesting that you have to live your life by other people’s standards to be found worthy. If you aren’t concerned with fashion, you don’t have to pretend in order to “take care of yourself’. Though spending any time at all each day considering your appearance is hardly the same as selling out to public opinion. If you put in little effort, it reflects the value you give to yourself, and to some degree the rest of your life, both business and pleasure. Treat yourself, and your brand, with the respect you deserve as valuable part of society.
You Aren’t Promoting Yourself Properly – Whether you’re over-eager in your self promotion, or too docile to grab any attention, you’ll be able to judge the success of your social media impact by the size of your following. Now, if you’re just starting out, you need to give it some time before you measure your success. However, if you’ve been at it for awhile and are still struggling, it might be time to revisit your self promotion strategy. Do you have your own website in your name? Do you post too much on twitter or not enough? Is your LinkedIn profile up to date or outdated? Your self-promotional efforts are your only voice to the public. If you want people to know who you are and what you can offer, it starts with communicating with them in a way they can hear.
Your Business Cards Aren’t Up To Snuff – When you make a new contact in person, they are often left with only a fading memory of who you are, a conversation you had, and a business card with your contact info. This card ought to reflect not only your personality, but also your brand. If you got a bit lazy and picked whatever was easiest or cheapest, then you’re unlikely to leave a lasting impression on the recipients. If you spend some creative time to really come up with a design that screams your brand’s name, you won’t have to rely on that fading memory of a good conversation. They’ll be able to remember exactly who you are because of the card in their hand.
by Kristina Parker | Feb 27, 2014 | E-Commerce, Latest
Anyone who builds an e-commerce store can’t expect to make money without a good fight. I’ve shown them some website design tips they should implement if they want to increase their chances of making a lot of sales.
Anyone can build an e-commerce store because there are so many templates available these days. It’s a lot harder when you want people to hand over their hard-earned money because they won’t do it. The design of your website could make all the difference and we’re going to look at a few things you should include. By implementing these great tips you won’t definitely become rich, but you will stand a better chance of making money from your site.
Professional looking photos
Nobody is going to buy something if your photos don’t look professional because of two obvious reasons. The first reason is that you won’t look trustworthy, which I know isn’t going to come as much of a shock to you. The second reason is that people want to see exactly what they’re buying and a quality photo lets them look at the product in more detail. They also need to be large enough for people to see them, and hopefully you have more than one for each product.
A quality logo
You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on a logo. You don’t even need to spend anything on a logo if you can design one yourself, but whatever you do it must look good. If you don’t have a quality logo it’s going to be hard for people to take you seriously. Would you take yourself seriously if your logo looked like it was designed by a child? Don’t think it needs to look fancy because it doesn’t. You just need to make sure it doesn’t look unprofessional.
A visible shopping cart
Anyone who is going to buy something from the store will add a product to their shopping cart. You don’t want them to have to go looking for it when they want to proceed to the checkout. It should be in a prominent place above the fold and it should be large enough to stand out. Hopefully it also looks good because this is the part where people do actually need to type in their bank details. You don’t want them to get scared because your shopping cart looks too amateur.
Add social media buttons
A lot of purchases come from people reaching your site through social media channels, so it’s obvious you should have some buttons in your site that people can click on. It doesn’t cost you any money to have them there, but they will bring you in a few sales somewhere down the line. If you don’t want to have too many extra things on your site you might just want to stick to the popular ones like Facebook and Twitter.
Include a phone number
People actually notice a big increase in their conversion rate when they include a phone number. This means you will need a help-desk unless you want to do everything yourself, but most people won’t call the number anyway. They just want to see it there because it will feel like the website is a real business and not something a scammer stuck on the internet when they were bored one day. It also needs to be somewhere people can see it straight away.
Tell them about your USP
If you have a unique selling proposition you want to tell them on the homepage where they will see it easily because it could sway their buying decision. If someone offered free shipping wouldn’t you like to know before you tried to buy their product? If a company gives some of their proceeds to charity it’s also something you would like to know. Work out your USP and incorporate it into the design because you will see much better results.
by Felicitas Ritter | Feb 4, 2014 | Latest, Marketing
For any business, having an integrated marketing plan really is the best way to optimize communications efforts. Without this, you could be missing out on great opportunities to reach your target audiences. Relying only upon traditional advertising outlets like radio, TV or newspaper to generate all the buzz you need, just isn’t as effective a strategy as it once was. In particular, if you have a smaller business, you might even want to skip these costly budget-busting vehicles for a while, depending on your market. Even when it comes to marketing for larger corporations, throwing everything into a splashy ad campaign is not generally the best practice. A more strategic approach is to examine all the marketing tools at hand, and take into account all the ways they might help you reach consumers.
If you are not yet working with social media, this is something that really does need to be incorporated into the mix.
As of December 2013, according to the Pew Research Center, 73% of online adults engage in social networking. Additionally, 42% are utilizing multiple platforms. If you aren’t leveraging Facebook and Twitter, at the very least, you are likely missing out on reaching a significant portion of your target audience. For niche markets, YouTube is another fantastic platform to reach very specific types of consumers.
Other considerations have to include direct marketing campaigns or promotions for consumer contests or giveaways, sponsorship opportunities, such as with local sports teams, and special events to launch new products. All are great ways to effectively get your brand out there.
Something many companies seem to take for granted are the impressions received through public relations. Having the opportunity to showcase products for free on local television programs or in specialty publications, or for the company spokesperson to be positioned as an opinion leader can be invaluable to future business successes.
The ingenuity of your campaign is only limited by the imaginations of your marketing and creative teams. And its effectiveness is not always a matter of budget, but rather of good planning and the ability to utilize a wide range of integrated marketing services that work synergistically together.
by Belinda Lui | Jan 30, 2014 | Business Success, Latest
We’ve discussed in previous posts the importance of strong and lasting client relationship building: regardless of what your marketing strategy is or how ambitious your goals are, the bottom line is that it is all done in vain if the client relationship building is not present. I had a conversation the other day about ways to win new business; and while this may vary from industry to industry (and person to person), the traditional form of winning business through a proposal did not deem successful in this person’s case. Instead, he found that by simply hosting dinners at his home and inviting prospective clients over, he could obtain more leads than couriering a 15-page document to them. A personal touch, if you will.
Where else is client relationship building important?
In social media, many businesses think that it is good enough to generate content that is attractive to the end user — and even though we stress the importance of content managed posts, we also encourage community and client relationship building. The purpose should not only be impressions and reach, but also the relationships you create and maintain in the process. This means replying to comments and messages in a timely manner or addressing concerns appropriately. The person (or people) managing your social media accounts should add a personal touch to everything they do (as long as it is consistent with brand standards).
As for day-to-day operations, it doesn’t hurt to think of ways in which you can attract or retain clients by sending them little reminders of why they’ve chosen to do business with you. This can be by way of holiday cards, branded merchandise, or a hand-written note expressing gratitude for their patronage.
At the end of the day, there are probably several other businesses competing for the business you’ve won. Capabilities will only get you so far — building a strong and lasting client relationship is what will keep them coming back.
What are some of the ways in which you attract or retain client relationship building?
by Miriam Hara | Jan 24, 2014 | Business Success, Latest
Regardless of today’s speed of business, I believe one aspect has remained essentially unchanged: Client management. It can be summed up in one word: Anticipation. I know some of you will associate the idea of “anticipation” with Heinz Ketchup. However, I have always thought of “anticipation” as a key part of building and achieving strong client relationships.
Client management is a high priority in any business, rightly so. How companies manage their clients often means the difference between achieving success or experiencing failure. Although, today’s speed of business doesn’t allow for the slow, nurturing and rapport building methods of client relationship building of the past. The introduction of faster technology, coupled with a tough economic landscape has meant that to some business professionals, the definition of “client management” has changed.
Essentially, in order to achieve successful client management businesses need to be able to anticipate the needs of their clients even before they do.
What’s it like in their shoes? Yes, this is a cute way of saying that you need to put yourself in their position. Every new project that you work on with your client will provide you with a better understanding of the environment they live in day in and day out. Don’t wait for them to ask you about the results of their latest campaign or initiative, anticipate it. Your job is to make their job easier.
Think ahead. When your client makes a request, don’t just deliver what they want, give them what they will need. Go the extra mile and think about what other questions they may have as a result of their request. If you don’t know why a certain request was made, get informed. Thinking ahead saves time and makes decision making easier.
Don’t play volleyball. In other words, take the time to think first. Email has made everyone accessible at all times. It has also allowed for a sense of urgency on all business matters. If your client fires off an email with questions, don’t just shoot back an incomplete response without enough information – your client will be forced to reply back with more questions. After 15 minutes of volleying back and forth, you might end up with 9 emails composed of multiple questions and responses, all in bits and pieces. Instead, take the time to understand what the issue really is from the start.
If your client is asking about the budget for a project, don’t just send the dollar amount. You need to also include the scope and duration of the project as well as any other relevant details all in one email. If you missed the opportunity to provide all the details of a project at the start, take a step back and give this information as completely as possible.
Don’t ask, “How high?” Add value. When a client makes a request, don’t just give them what they asked for, provide context or any other relevant information that can help. Think outside the box. An agency-client relationship is about adding value by being part of the team.
Circling back to the Heinz comparative, in the 70s, Heinz ketchup bottles were glass. That meant that pouring took time and patience. Today’s quick-squeeze plastic bottles have provided us with instant gratification.
Creating a solid client management process is about anticipating the needs of your clients on a day to day basis. The fine art of anticipating involves having the patience, taking the time and being thoughtful, attentive and mindful of your clients needs.
