Tag Archive for: marketing

Branding to the next level

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Brand

Your company probably has a great logo that took a lot of time and effort to come up with. But branding is so much more than just an amazing logo. It is the way that clients and customers perceive your company, each and every time an interaction occurs. It is the who, what, when, where, why and how as it pertains to your company’s internal and external communications.

Take a look at all of the interactions that potential clients and customers have with your company. Are they receiving a consistent image across all touch points?

 

 

Here are some common marketing pieces to assess in your brand consistency analysis:

  • Website
  • Company letterhead
  • Email signatures
  • Business cards
  • Social media profiles
  • Online and print ads
  • E-newsletter templates

Questions to ask yourself as you look at each piece of your marketing puzzle:

  • Is the correct logo being used? Is the size consistent?
  • Are the company colours being used? Are they overshadowed by any non-company colours?
  • Is the font type and size consistent?
  • If images are used, do they convey a similar look and feel?
  • Does marketing copy use the same “voice” throughout?

Once you have completed an analysis of the branding across your marketing pieces, the next step will be to create a branding document so that all future collateral is consistent.

Fav Webinars

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Webinars – photo courtesy of http://www.sxc.hu/profile/arinas74

I don’t know about you, but lately my email inbox has been filling up with lots of messages telling me about upcoming webinars. I used to just click delete because I would much rather scroll quickly through a written post than listen to someone drone on. But then I actually watched one. And the funny thing was, I actually liked it. I could sit and learn while being entertained, browse through emails when I got bored, and take notes – something I almost never do when speed-reading through blog posts and news articles.

While I try to watch webinars live, sometimes life just gets in the way. So I appreciate the individuals and companies who send emails after the webinar is finished with a link to watch the replay.

Three favourite email lists that I belong to that put on good webinars are:

What about you? Any favourite sites for webinars?
Or do you host webinars yourself? I’d love to follow some more great content.

5 Reasons Why TweetDeck is a Great Twitter Tool

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When I first started on Twitter back in 2008, I viewed all Tweets within the Twitter interface. Then, I got hooked on HootSuite, especially when I started managing multiple Twitter accounts. I’m still a paying subscriber to HootSuite and love using the cute little Hootlet add-on to easily share interesting URL’s on Twitter. But something just seemed to be missing.

Enter TweetDeck. This slick desktop application (I prefer the downloaded version, although you can access it online as well) is always running in the background and has become my favourite way to interact with users on Twitter.

Here’s 5 reasons why I like TweetDeck so much:

1. Visually attractive – let’s face it, looks matter. And TweetDeck just plain looks good. I love the black background, the well-sized Twitter profile pics, and the fact that you can always view thumbnail images of pics that people post on Twitter.

2. It still displays Instagram images – as you may have heard, Twitter and Instagram went through a big breakup at the end of 2012. Basically, the end result was that Instagram pictures no longer display within the Twitter interface; instead, you need to click on a link and be taken to another page to view the image. Not so with TweetDeck! You can still view thumbnail images of kids, half-eaten restaurant dishes and scenery shots and also view the full-sized images within TweetDeck.

Update November 2014: Instagram images are no longer displayed in TweetDeck; instead, you need to click on the link and view the image in your browser.

3. Easily view different streams – using TweetDeck’s columns feature, you can add a new column for whichever Twitter account, list, or search result you want. And then you can quickly flip back and forth between them, making it quick and simple to keep up-to-date on what’s going on in your version of the Twittersphere.

4. It makes noise – you can turn on or off sound alerts for each of your columns, so that you hear a ding every time someone messages you, mentions you, writes a Tweet that matches your search criteria, etc. (If you want to make my computer ding, just mention @jenhames on Twitter!)

5. It’s free – I already pay for lots of social media tools and services, so it’s great to find such a great tool that is free.

Do you use TweetDeck? Love it or hate it?
Then leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Facebook left menu - Facebook Interest List

Organizing with Facebook Interest Lists

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A few months ago, Facebook introduced ‘Interest’ lists. If you know me, you’ll know that I love lists; I have them for everything from steps to achieve clients’ goals, to what to pack for a camping trip, to just plain keeping my entire life in order.

Facebook Interest lists are great for two reasons. First, they allow you to organize the pages that you already like into lists, so that you can quickly and easily browse through those pages’ updates. And second, you can follow lists that other people have created, which probably include pages that you’ve never heard of before.

Facebook left menu - Facebook Interest ListYou may have an Interests section on the lefthand menu of your Facebook homepage; if so, click on “Add Interests”.

 

If not, the easiest way to add the Interests section is to click in the white box at the top of the page that says “Search for people, places and things” and enter the name of a page that you would like to add to an interest list. Once you are on that Facebook page, click on the drop-down arrow beside “”Message” and select “Add to Interest Lists” (see below). Then click “+ New List…”

Later, once you’ve created Interest lists, this is one way that you can add additional pages to the list.

 

Facebook Interests

A box will pop up; click on “Pages” on the lefthand side. Then start scrolling through the list of pages that you like and click on each page that you want to add to the list – a check mark will appear on each page that you have selected. Click “Next”, then add a name for the list and select who can see the list (public, friends or just you). Click “Done” and you are finished!

Now go to your Facebook homepage (click the Facebook icon on the upper lefthand corner) and on the lefthand menu you will see “Interests” with your newly created list. Click on the list to view updates from only the pages within the list, instead of your entire newsfeed.

To add a new Interest list, click on “Add Interests” on the lefthand menu and then follow one of the suggested lists, search for a list by keyword, or create a new list of your own.

And there you have it – how to organize the Facebook pages you follow using the Interest list.

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Click here to add my “Marketing Pages to Follow” Interest list. And if you have your own Interest list, feel free to post it in the comments section.

Book cover - "Ogilvy on Advertising"

Four online marketing lessons from David Ogilvy

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Book cover - "Ogilvy on Advertising"

Somewhere along my path to becoming a marketing consultant, an advertising executive gave me his copy of David Ogilvy’s “Ogilvy on Advertising”. Originally published in 1983, it was written well before the boom of online marketing and social media; however, Ogilvy was one smart cookie and his advice still rings true.

The first chapter alone has so many good nuggets of advice:

1. Do your homework
I know, no one likes doing research. But as Ogilvy puts it, “You don’t stand a tinker’s chance of producing successful advertising unless you start by doing your homework“. And this means studying the product, determining what kind of advertising your competitors have been doing (and with what level of success), and finally researching the consumers to find out what they think about the product, what language they use when they talk about it, and what promise would be most likely to make them buy the brand that you are marketing.

Lucky for us, the internet makes research quick, easy and inexpensive:
[blockquote align=”right” cite=”David Ogilvy”]You don’t stand a tinker’s chance of producing successful advertising unless you start by doing your homework.[/blockquote]

  • You can easily study the product and industry by a quick Google search
  • Determine related keywords by using Google AdWords: Keyword Tool
  • Set up Google Alerts to monitor new stories and blog posts about keywords related to your product and industry
  • Visit competitor websites, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, blogs, etc. to learn about what your competitors are doing and how well they are engaging consumers
  • Use free services such as the “@ Connect” and search options on Twitter, the online application TweetDeck, or else a paid tool, of which there are many, to monitor conversations about your company and industry

2. Brand image
Ogilvy discusses the need to decide on an “image” for the brand your are marketing, and he defines image as “personality”. He tends to use a lot of cigarette and alcohol companies as examples (hey, it was the ’80’s), and talks about Jack Daniel’s whiskey to illustrate the idea of brand image/personality. As he puts it, most people don’t try different types of whiskey and then choose their favourite based on taste alone – they choose their favourite brand based on the image that most appeals to them.

So think about your favourite brands – what images do they project? Do Coke and Mountain Dew appeal to the same audience? What about Nike and lululemon?

Then decide what image should be associated with your  brand (or define it, if it already exists). And make sure that the brand’s personality is consistent across all channels, including print advertising, online advertising, social media marketing, email signatures, voice mail messages, etc.

3. The positively good
“If you and your competitors all make excellent products, don’t try to imply that your product is better. Just say what’s good about your product – and do a clearer, more honest, more informative job of it“. In today’s crowded marketplace, this is extremely sage advice. Since you already did your homework and know what your competitors are saying (see number 1), go out there and do a better job than they do.

4. The lessons of direct response
One lesson in particular stands out to me as being relevant to online marketing. Ogilvy points out that most advertisers like to broadcast their commercials during prime time, but direct response advertisers have learned that they make more sales at night. Take a quick poll amongst your friends (or look at the time of their Facebook updates) and you’ll discover that a lot of people are online late at night and on the weekends. That might be a good time to update your Facebook page or publish a new blog post. Or perhaps your target audience are businesses, in which case you may want to experiment with sending your e-newsletter early in the morning, mid-week. There are lots of online resources out there that show when people tend to be online, so do some research. And remember to experiment by changing the day and time that you share online messaging – you may discover a pattern that is unique to your own company or brand.

And there you have it, online marketing lessons from Ogilvy. For someone who was born in 1911 and died in 1999, it’s amazing how his insights are still applicable. I only wonder what he would have thought about today’s marketing landscape?