How is your blacksmith shop different?

October 21, 2006

250pxhorseshoe_1 I want to share one of my favorite analogies with you because it’s impossible  not to get it.  And it’s a branding basic.

In the good old days, if your horse needed a new shoe and I owned the blacksmith shop, you came to me.  Not because I put a coupon in the local paper or because I was your sister’s husband.  But  because I was the only option.  One town.  One blacksmith.

Ah, if only it was that easy today, my friends.  But now, on every street, in every town, no matter what you do…you have competitors.  Lots of them. 

Let’s go back to my example and fast forward to today.  If you needed a shoe for your horse, you’d have lots of choices.  All in the same town.  Some on the very same street.  So how do you decide?

As the shopkeeper, I have two choices, in terms of trying to get you to choose my shop.  I can either differentiate myself (translation — brand) so that you can tell how doing business with me would be a unique experience or I can be the cheapest.  That’s it.  I have to give you a reason to choose my shop. I have to clearly (and repeatedly) tell you why we’re a great match.  Especially if I am not the cheapest. 

Having a good product or offering good customer service is not a brand.  You have to have/create a personality.  You have to create a bevy of loyalists who are going to not only choose you but they’re going to sing your praises to everyone they know.  That’s the power of branding.  You can create a fan club.  In her blog Flooring the Consumer, C.B. Whittemore talks about creating a customer experience that allows you to romance your customers until they fall in love.

So…are you the cheapest or is your blacksmith shop different?  Can you describe that difference?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
More

How will you join in on Make a Difference Day?

October 17, 2006

An Issue of USA WEEKEND. The top blank bar fea...Image via Wikipedia

USA Weekend magazine declared that October 28th is Make a Difference Day.  Cool idea.  Sure…every day should be (and can be) make a difference day, but there’s something powerful about the idea of an entire nation working together on that goal, all in one fell swoop. 

So on a personal level, I challenge you.  How are you going to make a difference on that day?  But wait, I’m not done.  On a business level — how could your team/organization make a difference?  There’s great team building and a sense of greater good that comes from working together to help someone else.

At McLellan Marketing Group, we’ve adopted families during the holidays, bought items for a womens shelter, volunteered for a fundraiser for Make-A-Wish and many other community building activities.

I’m sure the recipients of our good works benefited from them, but really we were the ones who got the most out of it.  We felt good, did good and had fun doing it.  Best of all, our team was strengthened by the common experience.

How are you going to make a difference?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
More

Who are you calling cheap?

October 12, 2006

At McLellan Marketing Group, we talk to clients a lot about their pricing strategies.  At first, they don’t see it as a marketing issue.  "It’s an operations issue," they tell us.  Cost of goods, profit margin and voila — there’s your price.  Right?
010710_0841_0013_l__pthm
Hardly.

How you are priced, both in terms of where your prices fall in the marketplace and also the structure of your pricing, tells your potential customers a great deal about you.  Seth Godin, in a recent post, suggests that you can be cheap or you can be better. 

While I don’t disagree with Seth, I don’t completely agree with him either.  His logic is simple. If you are of a better quality, you can be more expensive.  If you stink or are mediocre, you need to be cheap.  That feels like a sucker’s choice to me.  While what he suggests is true, it is not the only truth.  Frankly, I think you can be of marginal quality and position yourself to be expensive.  If you’re cool enough, you’ll be able to command a high price tag.  And visa versa.  You can be great and still decide to be cheap.

My point is not to tell you what your price point should be.  My point is to tell you that you should purposefully decide, from a brand perspective, what your price stragies should be.  Do you have a pricing strategy?  Can you articulate it?

Let’s talk about pricing structure in the next post, eh?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
More

Tag, you’re it!

October 11, 2006

Taglines, when done correctly, can give your brand quite a boost.  Like the space shuttle, which needs a high energy set of booster rockets to break through the earth’s gravity before it can soar, your company’s efforts need a spark to get it moving forward.

Fair warning — making up a tagline just to have a cool tagline is not branding.  Your tagline is not a brand.  We can talk more about that tomorrow.  But…when done right…

A good tagline can capture and transmit your brand promise.  The discipline of identifying a few key words that communicate the full weight and force of your brand message is one of the cornerstones to creating a successful brand.  Think of it as a rallying cry.  It’s what you shout in the team huddle before going into the big game.  It’s a comforting whisper in your client’s ear.  It is the enticement that lures prospects to learn more about you. 

If you do it well, your tagline can energize your team and give them focus. It reminds them every day of the promise you are making in the marketplace.  A good tagline is not a pithy witticism or platitude.  It needs to stand up to these critical questions:

~ Does it provide a clear, recognizable and sustainable differentiation from your competition?  If you can swap out your name/logo and put theirs in, you have trouble.

~ Does it respond in an authentic way to a pressing need that your clients and potential clients struggle with?

~ Does it provide you (internally) with guidance for management decision-making, hiring, training and resource allocation?

If you can say yes to all 3 questions, you probably have a pretty strong tagline. Let’s test the theory — sell me your tagline.  Convince me its a good one.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
More

Better to not do it at all

October 8, 2006

Consistency.

It is one of the cornerstones to a good marketing and branding foundation.  Ann Michael at Manage to Change has a fantastic post on this topic.   Her point (and warning) is such an excellent one.  If you aren’t going to deliver on it consistently — don’t start.  It’s, as my daughter used to say, mean teasing.

Ann’s focus is on your customers and she’s right on the money.  But it holds just as true for employees.  How you treat your team speaks volumes to your customers, vendors and potential employees.  Don’t think its not being watched and judged.  So again — don’t do what you aren’t willing to keep doing.

At my agency, McLellan Marketing Group, I have always worked with the notion that I want to ruin my employees so they can’t possibly imagine working any place else.  I hire remarkably smart, creative people.  So I know my competitors are always looking to steal them.  I want to create a work environment  that demonstrates I’m as committed to them as I need them to be to our clients.  Here are some of the things we do to keep everyone motivated and happy.

~ Weekly concierge service from our good friends at Legs on Lease (someone to run their errands)
~ Professional masseuse doing chair massages
~ We close the office at noon on Fridays
~ An annual education allowance
~ Free soda (when you have to be creative on demand…caffeine is important!)
~ We just took a 3 day trip to Mpls as a team and people could bring spouses etc.

We take the same "let’s spoil them to death" attitude with our clients.  Come to a meeting at our place — you’ll get freshly baked cookies.  Every time.  Is that a reason for them to choose us?  Of course not.  But do you think they notice if they can’t smell the cookies when they come in?  You bet they do.

How can you spoil your employees and clients?  What’s something that is uniquely branded you but also, to Ann’s point, something you are going to commit to doing for the long haul?

To stand out in the crowded marketplace you need to do both.  Be audaciously true to your brand AND be consistent.  So what could you do?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
More

Link love or lazy links?

October 7, 2006

I’ve noticed that one of the prevailing types of posts in the blogosphere are link lists.  You know what I’m talking about — where a blogger will simply list 2-5 links to other blog site’s blog posts.  So here’s the question of the day — smart or lazy?

Here’s my general philosophy about marketing messages.  Don’t make your consumers work any harder than they have to.  Keep in mind, they are only marginally interested in what you have to say.  All along, they are wondering "what’s in this for me?" and if you don’t answer the question pretty quickly, they will move on. Images

So my answer to the question posed above is it all depends.  Some link lists are great.  The author tells you why they think you’d find value in the link they are providing.  Check out how Church of the Customer bloggers handle their links list.  By reading the brief description, I know whether or not it’s worth my time to check it out.  Genuine link love.

But, I’ve also stumbled upon plenty of lazy linkers out there.  A laundry list of links with no explanation serves no purpose to your readers.  If anything, it seems to me that the poster is simply either too lazy to actually write something and feels pressure to post or…even worse, they are trying to fake link love to get link backs.  (We all know you shouldn’t fake it!)

Either way, your consumers are too smart.   If you are linking for your own benefit — knock it off.  If you’re linking to share great posts or give someone a well deserved shout out — then be sure to put a little meat on the bone for your readers so they can decide if its of interest.

Long term, if you don’t — they’ll self select you right out of the mix.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
More

Blogtipping. Friend or foe?

October 2, 2006

Cowtip_1

I fully admit I am still a neophyte in the blogosphere.  I aspire to be a seasoned vet and no doubt will get there one day.  But I’m still learning.

I spotted an interesting trend over the past few days that has been given the moniker of blogtipping.  The premise is a simple one.  On the first of every month, bloggers introduce their community to 2-3 new blogs.  With each introduction is a shout out for a few things that make the blog good and the author then offers one tip on how the blog could be even better.

Easton Ellsworth gets the nod for starting this new custom.  Ann Michael, Mike Sansone, Phil Gerbyshak and Liz Strauss took blogtipping to a hilarious turn by creating a 4-part ode to the notion.  Cute…you bet.  But does it make marketing sense?

Traditional views in marketing is that the world is a competitive place. Does it make sense to tell your “customers” about something they might like better than what you have to sell?   Shouldn’t you do  everything in your power to keep them enamored with you and their eyes off any potential competitor?

Nope.  Have you ever tried to hold a puppy who didn’t want to be held?  They squirm, wiggle and whimper until you let go.  Customers are the same way.  No one wants to feel bound against their will.  You will earn their loyalty and respect (and repeat business) by demonstrating that you know them well enough to point them in the direction of other products, services and in this case, blogs that they will benefit from discovering.

The benefits to you?  Clients love referrals.  If you introduce them to something/one they love, they’ll love you even more!  The other benefit?  If you scratch my back, I might scratch yours.  It’s human nature to learn more about someone who makes a referral to you.  If you’re a good fit for their audience, those you have tipped will probably return the favor.

Is there a downside?  I don’t think so.  I highly doubt that anyone unsubscribes from a blog which has successfully blogtipped them to another great blog.  After all, you’ve just demonstrated that you know your customer well enough to know what else they’ll enjoy.

So blogtipping is a great marketing strategy!  And I will be joining the fray of tippers come November 1st!  Hats off to Easton and everyone else who embraces the blogosphere by recognizing that believing in abundance is a much smarter strategy than clinging to the poor puppies!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
More

Window dressing for your blog?

September 30, 2006

Want to add a little window dressing to your blog?  Why not add a favicon?  A what?  Yup, A favicon.  Short for "favorite icon" it’s a small icon that appears in the address bar of browsers when they are visiting or have bookmarked your blog.  If you’d like to learn more about it, check out typepad’s support page on the topic.

I noticed when using my NetNewsWire (an amazingly easy reader if you don’t already have one) that some people had little icons next to their blog name and others just had more generic google or typepad icons.  So I did a little legwork…and stumbled upon a post at Pajama Market.  If you don’t know this blog — you’ll want to.

It a favicon necessary?  Of course not.  But, it’s a little window dressing.  And that makes good marketing sense.

Remember, whether we are talking a blog, a deli, a dry cleaner or a tech support services company, you have a lot of competition.  Your potential buyers are looking for clues as to how you might be different from the others.  They want to have a sense of you. Your window dressings (elements that are more style than substance) can tell them a lot about your organization’s personality.

It’s human nature to seek out people/companies that feel comfortable. Birds of a feather an all.  So by giving your potential customers a peek into your attitude, it allows them to make a better choice.  It’s the difference in choosing Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby ice cream versus Kemp’s Old Fashioned Maple Nut.

Any time we can help a consumer decide to choose us OR not choose us, we win.  We earn customers who are a good fit and avoid those that aren’t.  Isn’t that what branding is all about?  Helping people know whether or not you’re a good fit?

So what will your favicon say about you or your blog?

As for this blog’s favicon?  Considering the name, I opted for this visual.  I found lots of stopwatches, but I liked how this one was looking at the watch from a different angle and looking more closely at the watch’s details.  That description felt like a good fit for my posts and thoughts.  What do you think?

Watch

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
More

Get the referrals that are best for you!

September 30, 2006

A roll of shiny grey duct tape.Image via Wikipedia

John Jantsch over at Duct Tape Marketing had an interesting post about referrals and being wiser about who you ask to be a referral source.  He makes a very valid point — some clients are better referrals than others.  I could not agree more.

But I think it goes beyond that. Before you can know which clients are best suited to help you grow your business, you’d better know what you are best suited to deliver.   As we’ve talked about before, branding is for the bold.  When you have the courage to define your organization’s brand, by default you are also saying that you’re not going to try to be everything to everyone.  Branding is about narrowing your focus and your reach.  You will not cast your net as wide.  But you will drill down a lot deeper.

So let’s say that you are a healthcare copywriter who’s passion is for making complicated medical information accessible to the lay person.  Your best referral sources are going to be clients that have hired you to do that sort of work.  Sure, you’ve taken generalist copywriting jobs.  And those clients probably love you too.  If they happen to refer you — great.  But concentrate your energy in terms of actively soliciting referrals within your area of expertise.  Honor your brand.  Actively grow your business within your brand.  Drill deeper.  And ask your best clients to help!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
More

Don’t let your technology embarrass you!

September 26, 2006

As a blogger on TypePad, I access my account by going to their home page and entering my userID and password.  Simple and efficient.  The TypePad home page is clean and well organized.  It has plenty of links and concise bits of information.  All what you would expect from people who use technology to make a living.

Typewriter

Here’s the odd thing.  Every time I go to their home page, the exact same quote appears.  Now, wouldn’t you think someone as sophisticated as the TypePad folks would use the power of their own technology and have quotes rotate?  If that was the case, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed.

Although it isn’t really fair, we consumers tend to notice things that seem deficient or out of place.  Don’t let your use of technology suggest that perhaps you haven’t thought it through, or even worse yet, don’t quite have a handle on it.

What does your technology say about you?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
More