5 Ways Your Brand and Branding Define You

There is a big difference between your “brand” and your “branding.” Your brand is you: who you are , what you do, what you stand for, your DNA personality. You are a tangible artifact, which you create into a brand–an image that lives in the minds of the people you interact with and who come to know you. Are you… A watercolor nature artist? An NBA athlete? A criminal trial attorney? An eighth-grade science teacher? A cupcake baker? A cardiologist? A business consultant? A French chef? Your branding is what you do: every way you put your brand in action to create  associations with you, including your… Website Blog Email marketing Community involvement Social media platforms Collaborations Partnerships Sponsorships I recently discovered a brand website called Ranking the Brands,...

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You Only Have a Little Time: Say It and Make It Stick

We are living in a world of instantaneous communication where you have to say it and make it stick – quick - or the opportunity is gone. Think about it: If you’re trying to communicate in this digital age, then you’ve noticed that our attention spans are short. Twitter makes us think we can get the gist of “it” in 140 characters or less.  But not just that; those of us who have worked with children were either frustrated or discovered the art of quick and powerful lessons. Have you ever tried to teach a roomful of 6-year-olds? My hat is off to the professional educator because in my opinion, a 6-year-old’s attention span seems to shift every 2 minutes.  And that’s perfect.   You can’t become good at communicating, marketing and getting the kind of attention that...

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5 Tips to Improve Your Marketing Mix

It’s not about one marketing piece, it’s about the whole thing. To be effective, your business needs a presence both offline and online. It needs to use print and digital marketing tools. It needs both advertising (paid) and publicity (free). It’s the marketing mix that gets and keeps your company message “out there” in front of your target audience. Here are five marketing mix tips to seriously consider and implement:  1. Brochures & Business Cards Print marketing items are not dead yet. Sometimes our technology doesn’t work like it should, and having that business card and brochure as a backup could save your marketing opportunity. Besides, there are a lot of people who just need to have something in their hands in order to remember you, so give it to them.  Have...

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12 tips for business success

What's important to the success of small-business owners and entrepreneurs? Knowledge, skill and talent. However, many competitors have the same traits you do. The key to beating the competition and achieving success is mental, reflected in one's attitude, totally controlled by the individual and requires no cash. This holds true in most human endeavors besides business — in sports, the arts and politics. How many times have we seen the underdog team or player win over the more talented opponent? The difference is often attitude. These 12 attitude attributes can put you in the right mindset for achieving entrepreneurial success. 1. Have passion for your business Work should be fun. Your passion will help you overcome difficult moments and persuade people to work...

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Infolinks Self Serve In-Text Ads Marketplace

Self Service Infolinks Marketplace Infolinks has introduced the world’s first In-Text ads Marketplace. The Marketplace allows you to create and optimize In-Text ads campaigns in a matter of minutes. Now advertisers can effortlessly create and manage their ad campaigns just like with Google AdWords. You can use the new Marketplace to promote your blog, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube Channel, etc., for a bigger brand boost at a reduced cost. While most bloggers work on free ways of generating traffic, the use of paid traffic sources like Infolinks can get the job done a lot easier. As an AdWords advertiser, I’m looking forward to testing out the Infolinks In-Text ads Marketplace. Quick and Easy Interface The self service In-Text Advertising Marketplace allows you to create campaigns in only...

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Love those customers!

In keeping with my recent rants on service and Customer Service Executives here’s some more info to get your team going. The organisation you work for has done some shuffling of titles etc. Or perhaps they are about to hire a new person (you) for a role in Customer Relations – they want you to manage it… Let’s say they are giving you ‘some scope’ to develop the role and or the department and let’s say they are serious and want to really wow the customers, love them so to speak. How will you go about it? Here’s ten thoughts from my perspective. Create an environment in the organisation from top to bottom where the Customer is King (it’s not new but it is still a great idea) no customers – no business right… so it should make solid sense. Get clear about the intended results – more sales...

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More Customer Love…

As If I haven’t prattled on enough lately about customer service people and loving customers… some more ideas and chunks of info must be useful to assist people to really think about what they do and how they might make this whole area better. If this resonates with your organisation then you could use this as a brainstorming tool to get practical action to take place. So here, take a lok at more weird and whacky ways to “love the customer!” Concentrate on the customer, figure out  what they need – want – love – aspire to – entertain them – quiz them – excite them – prod and poke them! (careful!) – cause them to giggle – get VERY curious about them (In the right way…) Thrill them with a fresh approach or two to loyalty Tell them things (good things, bad things, things they want...

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Going past one no…

Oh please, dear sales person, if I say no once perhaps you had better dig a bit deeper, ask more questions…  if I have an objection about the price, then ask why… what do I already know and how do I know that. If I have a niggle about one point, perhaps there are other points you can focus on… and hey how do you get past the issue of price “Why would I spend $5 – 6,000 if I can get one for $3-4,000?” simple, it’s like cars they do basically the same thing, some are perhaps better quality, some provide more status, you want quality and status, you pay… Here’s why (outline a benefit). Oh and if you’re calling me in Australia but you have an American accent that sounds like you are in an overseas call centre and the line is crap, I am going to be suspect about you right from the...

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Making your staff pay…

What your employees earn for the organisation needs to be more than what you pay them, but how much? There are costs to cover having employees, so it makes sense to earn more than just what they cost the organisation. In some organisations they seem to have no idea how much value their people add to the organisation, so lets have a think about the issue. Let’s look at a range of costs and how it all adds up (their wages while they are on holidays and wages for a person who may replace them, as well as superannuation, insurance etc). How much? If we work on a figure of $800 per week that’s nearly $42,000 pa. Here are the ‘hidden costs’. - 4 weeks wages for a fill in employee while the other is on holidays    $6,400 - 1 week personal leave      ...

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Guaranteed! But at what cost…

It’s standard practice to have a guarantee for many products and services. For some in business it’s the thing which sets them apart from their competition, for others it’s a legal compliance issue which they prefer wasn’t there. What does it cost your business and how should you handle it? Being a service nut I like the way it can make your business stand out from the crowd, compliance or not… so handling guarantees becomes a major issue you solidly stand behind, giving every customer ‘peace of mind’ in knowing you will be there with them if ANY issue arises. Over the period of a year or three it can be easy to look at the cost of supplying services to fulfill your guarantee obligations to keep your ‘customers happy and fulfill your legal obligations. In the intervening ‘learning...

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Step in early or wait for the problem to arise.

It’s a dilemma many Supervisors, Managers and Leaders face. You have a team who waiver from the path occasionally, do you let it go until it becomes a problem, or do you step in early and keep things on track. I figure if you take a Leaders view you provide the guidelines so the team can follow the lead, therefore you don’t wait for a challenge to arise, you provide a great set of guidelines to ensure things stay on track. If things stray from the path, you then get to put on your ‘coaching hat’ and provide support to ensure the team are aware of the guidelines and assist them to explore how they might have ‘strayed from the path’. This is one of the reasons I often suggest a great set of Values – Mission and Vision be in place as a foundation to always work from. It allows the Leader to have...

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