Go Button Marketing: July 2015

Friday, July 31, 2015

Orange County Small Business Branding Tips

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Thursday, July 30, 2015

Word of Mouth Marketing Strategy

Word-of-Mouth Marketing in the Digital Age

Word-of-Mouth is alive as it ever was in the past. It is an important marketing channel deserving of much thought, an exact strategy, and proactive tactics.

When I interview my branding and marketing clients as to what is their best source of ideal clients, they will say with zero hesitation, “word of mouth” or “referrals.” Yet, when I then ask them, “So, if this is your most successful marketing action, then what do you do to proactively generate more referrals any time you need more clients?”, they draw a blank stare 95% of the time.

Word-of-Mouth Marketing Statistics

· 84% of consumers say they either completely or somewhat trust recommendations from family and friends about products – ranked highest for trustworthiness. [Nielson]

· 74% of consumers identify WOMM as a key influencer in their purchasing decision. [Ogilvy/Google/TNS]

· 88% of people have their reasons for trusting online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts. [BrightLocal]

· 72% say reading a positive customer review increase their trust in the business; it takes reading between 2-6 reviews to get 56% of them to this point. [BrightLocal]

· On social media, 58% of consumers actively share their positive experiences with a company, and ask family and friends for their opinions on brands. [SDL]

The Value of Word of Mouth Marketing

· WOMM has been shown to improve marketing effectiveness by up to 54%. [MarketShare]

· 84% of consumers reported always or sometimes taking action based on personal recommendations. 70% said they did the same of online consumer opinions. [Nielson]

· The average value of a Facebook fan is certain consumer categories is $174. [Syncapse]

· 43% of social media users report buying a product after sharing or favoriting it on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. Over half of purchases inspired by social media sharing occur within 1 week of sharing or favoriting, and 80% of purchases resulting from social media shares occur within 3 weeks of sharing. [VisionCritical]

What People are Sharing and Why

· 81% of people said they're influenced by what their friends share on social media. [Market Force]

· 77% of brand conversations on social media are people looking for advice, information, or help. [Mention]

· Brands that inspire a higher emotional intensity receive 3X as much WOMM as less emotionally-connected brands. [Keller Fay Group]

· 66% of respondents under the age of 34 are more likely to give a referral after receiving social recognition. [Software Advice]

· More than 50% of respondents are more likely to give a referral if offered a direct incentive, social recognition or access to an exclusive loyalty program. [Software Advice]

· 39% of respondents say monetary or material incentives such as discounts, free swag or gift cards greatly increase their chances of referring a brand. [Software Advice]

· 91% of B2B buyers are influenced by WOMM when making their decision to buy. [USM]

· 61% of IT buyers report that colleague recommendations are the most important factor when making a buying decision. [B to B Magazine]

5 WOMM Actions to Initiate in the Digital Age

STEP NO. 1 – Brand Yourself as a Premier Expert. It is a proven fact that consumers seek out and buy from brands that they trust and regard as experts. It is vital that you determine what makes you and/or your business unique and highly valuable. This is part of the first step of branding.

Your brand’s positioning and promise must be clearly communicated on your website, but also across your entire digital footprint. The immediate thought may be only on social media, but there are also many other opportunities, such as through speaking at a conference, email marketing, starting a blog, or writing a book. Figure out the medium that best supports your ideas and develop a strategy to showcase your expertise there.

Additionally, you need to prove and publish that you’re an expert through a number of ways:

· Authorship of some material (book, eBook, etc.)

· You host some type of radio show, YouTube show, podcast, etc.

· Positive reviews from customers on Yelp, Facebook, Google My Business, etc.

· Case studies of those you have significantly helped

· Badges of trusted publications that you have been featured on

· Photographs of you with notable people or speaking to groups

Step No. 2 – Embrace Transparency. The success of WOMM depends upon the trust people have with the brand. When you are not transparent or even dishonest, the word-of-mouth will turn ugly - real fast! You must first always strive to deliver an exceptional product or service. When you don’t, you must rectify the matter rapidly and with humility. Brands will make mistakes – even the great ones. But it is how they deal with their mistakes that retains the people’s trust and continued business.

STEP No. 3 – Create Content that is worthy of being shared. They most rapid way that you can assist your existing customers and fans to share your brand, to refer you more people your way, is to give or send something to share. In other words, make it easy to share your brand with some type of printed content or digital property.

Publishing engaging, insightful, and even entertaining content, is the most effective method to accomplish this strategy. It has been found that referrals can jump by 50% by simply giving your audience something to share with others. This could be:

· Discount or gift card

· Free offer to try out your brand, such as a consultation

· Complimentary seminar, workshop or webinar

· Printed materials, such as a brochure or one-sheet

· YouTube video that they can shared on social media

· Free eBook

· A 30-minute Skype interview

STEP N0. 4 – Empower Your Brand Ambassadors & Online Influencers. Make sure you empowering and engaging with your best customers. As had pointed out before, 80% of your referrals will come from 20% of the people you do business with. Be sure to let them know how important they and ensure that they are given VIP treatment when they refer people your way, or share your content.

Additionally reach out to leaders and influencers in your industry or niche. These can be local journalists, key opinion leaders, mommy bloggers, or even popular YouTubers. The age of Social Media has given everyone the power to broadcast their offers. Many bloggers and YouTube sensations have amassed avid followers. It would be wise to co-brand with them to help forward your message.

It is a good idea to make a target list of influencers that appeal to your key demographics. Learn about them and why they are influential. By engaging in dialogue with their posts or tweets, you can find ways to work them that is relevant to both of your brands.

STEP No. 5 - Convert Social Media into Social Sharing. I have one branding client, a coffee house in Orange County, CA, who I consulted offer a 10% discount for anyone who checked in on Yelp or Facebook when they ordered their coffee or meal. As well, I told him to grab all the business cards that we could for a weekly raffle of a free coffee of their choice. Within weeks, 35% of his customers were checking in on a routine basis. Within the first month, we had almost 1,000 email addresses, of which we leveraged to mail out announcements and new menu items.

Within 6 months, that business had an increase of 20% in revenue. Sharing content with friends online is just as valuable as verbal word-of-mouth.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Brand Leadership Strategy

“Are You a Professional Who Desires to be Regarded as a Premier Expert?”

It is a proven fact that consumers select trusted experts & brands

With so many marketing messages in today’s digital landscape, how does your brand stand any chance of rising above the noise? The answer is to publish and distribute authoritative content that clearly brands you as a knowledgeable expert within your field of expertise.

Imagine if you could organize your own version of a syndicated TV show, where you were featured as the expert speaker where an exact script is meticulous crafted for you around top keywords and yours consumer’s interest points.

Now imagine a professional video marketing team records the entire event, carefully repackaging your event into dozens of optimized YouTube videos. Not only is this content optimized to be found within YouTube's organic search results, but we also ensure that you maximize your video content in the following ways:

· Embedded into your website and blogs

· Drip fed to your email list

· Shared across all your social media channels

· Converted into optimized blog posts

· Audio portions repurposed into podcasts

· Generate enough content to potentially create a future book.

Without question this complete done-for-you marketing program offers businesses an efficient and highly-effective method to creating professional branded content. This is exactly how the branding and marketing battle is won in today's internet game.

Now imagine all of this content created in a day or two! Welcome to the Premier Expert done-for-you brandingand marketing program.

Best, Edwin Dearborn

+Edwin Dearborn

Local Business Marketing Services Orange County CA

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Lead Generation Companies & Techniques | Orange County CA

Lead Generation Techniques That Generates More New Customers!

by Edwin Dearborn

Author of the Amazon bestseller, Power Branding Secrets

The ultimate objective with branding and marketing is to increase the number of customers, as well as increasing sales. And no doubt, attracting customers is a top concern and challenge for most businesses. As Fast Company stated, "Almost every industry is struggling with overcapacity: too many goods chasing too few customers."

For a brand to attract more loyal customers, they will need to reassess and adjust their mindset, strategy, tactics and marketing mix. But the ultimate goal can never be lost amid the planning and tactics - Attracting more customers!

The sole purpose of marketing is to sell more to more people, more often and at higher prices. There is no other reason to do it." - Sergio Zyman

Creating More Customers is Job No. 1

As a brand, you need to spend much more time and effort attracting attention from your target audience and prospective customers. You cannot build a brand or a business in a state of obscurity. The meek may inherit the Earth, but they will never build a powerful, prosperous brand. Business mistake #1: An improper estimation of effort to market and sell in order to build a successful business.

If your brand is not attracting and developing enough customers, then you need to expend more thought, effort, resources and time on creating more customers, email contacts and followers on social media. To succeed in business, you must be exerting a continual and mindful effort in generating new customers and repeat purchases from existing customers.

The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” - Peter Drucker

Become Strategic, Not Reactive

Brands that are built correctly, attracting more customers, are driven by strategic-minded leaders. Reactive business people handle whatever comes their way, responding to emergencies and immediate concerns. They cope, versus organizing by building a strategic brand, recruiting effective team members and putting into place efficient and documented business processes.

Well-organized brands will always attract and retain more customers than reactive businesses. Epic, prosperous brands are built by strategic-minded leaders.

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.” - Tom Peters

You Must Wisely Manage Your Resources

If you don’t have the marketing budget to attract more customers, then you have to spend the time and effort to attract more customers. Either way, you will have to expend more action and/or budget towards generating more attention and new customers for your business. Creativity and hustle are enormous resources when you lack other resources.

Businesses that blame their lack of marketing budget will soon find themselves out of business, replaced by a new startup or a much wiser business that solved their marketing and sales problems creatively.

Capital isn't so important in business. Experience isn't so important. You can get both these things. What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn't any limit to what you can do with your business and your life."- Harvey Firestone

Understanding Your Customer is Business Gold

You need to understand the needs, desires, dreams, frustrations and challenges of your existing customers, as well as your potential customers. You can gain valuable insight into your customer’s mindset with industry reports, Google Trends, keyword research, one-on-one surveys, comments on social media, and many other resources.

The rising power of customers is without doubt one of the biggest game-changers for business. Responding with yesterday’s notions of "customer centricity" just doesn’t cut it anymore because it’s become a lot harder to gauge what drives purchasing decisions. Digital technologies have utterly transformed what customers value and how they relate to companies. Customers have become not only more demanding but much more specific in their demands.

That’s why it’s so crucial that business leaders keep a close eye on emerging customer needs, and make use of data technologies to gather and analyze that intelligence, in order to rethink how they create value for customers.

Those who truly empathize, resonate and connect with their customers build powerful, emotional bonds with them. Only then does the loyalty occur.

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker

The first step in exceeding your customer's expectations is to know those expectations.” - Roy H. Williams

Build Strategic Alliances

Building a strong network of strategic alliances is a very powerful and effective method to attracting new customers. According to Producer’s eSource, a common strategy for entering into a strategic alliance is to gain the advantage of another company’s innovations without having to invest in new research and development.

Any business can build a referral and co-branding relationship with ten or more complimentary businesses that can help to attract more customers. Personal referrals and co-branding effort cost almost no money and can represent your brand's best source of ideal customers.

Alliances and partnerships produce stability when they reflect realities and interests." - Stephen Kinzer

Understand the “Branding Triangle”

Branding yourself, making yourself known goes well beyond an impressive logo, catchy tagline, attractive packaging and a well-designed website. There are tens of thousands of businesses who have all these “Brand Identity” factors in place and who are completely broke.

As I explain in detail in my book, Power Branding Secrets, branding is composed of three major components, which I refer to as the, “Branding Triangle.” These three major components are:

Brand Identity – This is your logo, tagline, type style, packaging, colors, design, décor, uniforms, etc.
Content Management – This is your promotional and sales materials and actions that engage your customers, moving them through the marketing and sales funnel. This can include your website, blogs, videos, podcasts, referral programs, social media, brochures, mailers, email marketing, webinars, catalogs, ebooks, white papers, sales presentations, training materials, etc.
Customer Service – This is how you and your team render your services and/or products to meet or exceed your customer’s needs and expectations. It is also the tone in which you deliver.

All three of these major components are what builds a brand’s reputation, value and word-of-mouth, good or bad. To attract and keep more and more customers, you must excel at all three components of the “Branding Triangle” on a consistent and routine basis.

You Must Offer the Irresistible

To attract potential customer’s attention, you offer something valuable and/or unique enough to try you out for the first time. This is the essence and purpose of your content marketing. Your content must offer something that your brand can deliver and which satisfies your customer's needs.

This is what is referred to as a lost leader or the “Freemium” that your audience opts-in for or takes advantage of in person so that you can now build a relationship with them. Such examples are free samples, 2-for-1 offers, a free 30-minute consultation, discounts, a free car wash, etc. You will spend much more money obtaining the customer than you will retaining that customer. The majority of the heavy lifting, marketing and sales wise, is on the front end when it comes to attracting and boarding customers for your business.

Always be pushing out and offering an irresistible offer. You know when you have one: it’s attracting new appointments and customers. These offers may change over time, so be aware of what is working and what is not.

I'm addicted to the deal, to the next thing. It's irresistible.” - John Caudwell

Invest in Paid Social Advertising

Social media channels have completely monetized their platforms. The vast majority of your organic posts are being seen by less and less of your connections.

The average Facebook reach in 2015 is estimated to be only around 2.6%. Meanwhile, on the second largest network, Twitter, you can reach about 10% of followers with a tweet. Some claim only to reach as few as 3.61%. The same holds true with LinkedIn. Even though LinkedIn is content-based—similarly to Facebook—your status updates and posts should still reach about 20% of your network.

Creating and distributing relevant and engaging content, with the purpose to attract, acquire and engage your target audience, has become a popular marketing tactic over the past few years. But although most companies understand how to promote their content via their “owned” channels, such as their Facebook page, Twitter account or LinkedIn company page, many are missing out on the opportunity to get their content in front of a larger audience through paid social promotions. To reach a broader customer base, you will need to leverage paid advertising on social media.

Be Professional & Amazing

The customer experience, from your content to your services and products, must be professional and amazing; two qualities that will never go out of style in business. You need to create memorable impressions as a business when your customer arrives and leaves. It is the small things that can make a huge difference in creating a memorable first impression. Great brands pay attention to the details, knowing that these can represent their factor for differentiation.

This is why employee training and well-crafted business processes are also important keys to building a successful business. Great customer experiences soon convert into 5-Star online reviews, organic social shares, and positive word-of-mouth.

A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” - Michael LeBoeuf

Do What Works Consistently

Direct and proactive programs that increase quality appointments, in-bound calls and/or walk-ins are the most important marketing actions that you can initiate and maintain. Businesses that consistently drive leads and calls will attract more customers. Consistency is just as important as "workability" when it comes to attracting attention in a overcrowded and noisy market place.

Companies and their brands need to reach out and speak directly to consumers, to honor their values, and to form meaningful relationships with them. They must become architects of community, consistently demonstrating the values that their customer community expects in exchange for their loyalty and purchases.” - Simon Mainwaring

Generate & Publish Your Best Results

Third party endorsements and online reviews can catapult or crash a brand faster than a military rocket. To attract more customers for your business, you must develop a proactive strategy in generating genuine reviews on Yelp, Google My Business, Angie's List, and other similar sites. These reviews can be further repurposed as content on your website, shares on social media and further distributed to your email list.

Additionally, the B2B world needs to create branded content such as case studies, endorsements, awards and videoed features of success stories. Press releases should be used to broadcast accomplishments with major clients.

Brands don’t control the message anymore. Consumers have become the brand managers for the products they use." - Harvard Business Review

Always Hustle

It is hard to beat a sports team, individual or business that out-hustles you day in and day out. If you are a fan of best-selling authors, Grant Cardone and Gary Vaynerchuk, then you know that their successes were built on pure, relentless hustle.

Hustle translates itself into so much value that your audience cannot help but take notice and become inspired. When customers see that you are genuinely attempting to fulfill their needs and wishes, they will never think of switching brands or referring their friends elsewhere. Hustle makes up for most shortcomings and can in itself become your number one tactic to win more customers over.

Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration." -Thomas Edison

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Edwin Dearborn is the author of Power Branding Secrets. His book clarifies how any brand can spark customer interest and ignite sales for any startup or small business.Purchase your copy today!