Show Love to Brand Advocates

What would you say if you could add 5, 10, or 1000+ marketing reps to your team? For free?

What if these marketing reps would freely write about your brand and tell their friends and if all they expected in return is recognition and access to insider information?

I just described brand advocates. Newsflash, this is not groundbreaking insight on my behalf. Word-of-mouth is the time-proven cornerstone of successful marketing and the term brand advocates is just a moniker given to those who supply your brand positive word-of-mouth.

But now, for the unique insight. We have the greatest opportunity in marketing history to enable and arm our brand advocates. We can supply the tools, the channels and even the audiences to brag about our products and services through digital marketing. The best news of all? It's as accessible to the small business as it is to the Fortune 500 companies of the world.

Take advantage and level the playing field. 

Make Your Brand's Website Relevant to the Sales Process

Over here at Mudhouse, we believe that too many brands miss opportunities to capture attention and add immediate relevance to the customer once the customer finds them online.  We've listed some ideas on how an organization’s website could immediately strike greater engagement possibilities:

• Develop a blog and use it as a sales tool/testing ground. Posts should be brief, incorporate photos and/or videos that help in telling a story and speak in a conversational tone.  Be ready to respond to comments and questions in a timely fashion, noting which topics have the most traction for your prospects.
• Analyze where people are clicking, use trackable URLs (bit.ly offers metrics) and regularly review the metrics
• Offer Q&As with happy customers and how your product offering is being implemented, using both video and text
• "Socialize" the press area and more visible areas of your site, ensuring content is shareable and interactive
• Incorporate product and service reviews via third-party applications that live within your web platform



Good Corporate Strategy

There is much wisdom in sticking with the strength of your company's original corporate vision and income source. Circuit City lost sight of it's core success which was innovative new products, great support and sales people who give great advice.

While Circuit City was working on online car sales, Best Buy developed a model of great products, best prices and non-commissioned knowledgeable sales people. Circuit City in its distraction left it’s core income source and lost it’s way in the online car sales business. Without cash flow, Circuit City could not sustain viability and faded into bankruptcy.

TV giant Zenith arrogantly failed to understand the competitiveness and innovations of the Japanese television companies as they slept their way to failure. When they realized their mistake, they set their guns to automatic and in rapid fire fashion, developed product after product until they ran out of cash and into bankruptcy, then were overrun by their competition.

A good company turns off the automatic setting on their proverbial guns and stays in a single-shot fire mode. They take conservative, calculated shots that are designed to keep their core strengths producing cash flow needed to sustain viability as they bring new products to market.

Ames Department Stores was the Walmart of the 1960’s. Walmart essentially copied the Ames marketing plan and understood the core philosophy and the need to stick to this plan. Ames decided to grow by purchasing companies instead of developing new stores embedded with their core people, philosophies and culture. Ames ended up with mixed cultures, reduced cash flow and all too quickly, bankruptcy.

This philosophy applies to your marketing and branding strategies as well. Don't try to be everything to everyone. Avoid watering down your core message by promoting every last service or product you offer. Pick your strongest product or service and lead with that, the rest will fall in-line.

Strategic Brand Building

Building successful brands is not a one-size fits all activity. Brand building is both art and science, and the method of creating brand strategy is never the same for every brand.

Brand strategy is an obsessive and often the most misunderstood discipline in marketing. It’s of critical importance to know beforehand what will be the most effective strategy for building your brand. Brand owners and managers who desire brand innovation often end up with brand imitation.

It’s very difficult to build a brand that breaks through menagerie of images and messages consumers are drowning in today. Not only must brand strategy differentiate your proposition from others, but more importantly, this differentiation must also be highly valued.

We’re way past the traditional thinking and point of view that brand building is an activity that just gives a product or service a catchy name, snappy slogan, pretty logo, compelling packaging and advertising.

Brand strategy is like creating mythology -- stories people care about and remember. People don’t buy products, they buy personalities and meanings associated with the story of those products. People will only find meanings in brands with personality.

A brand strategy worth investing money in over the long haul has to tap into the emotions and feelings of your target segment in ways that transcend the functional and rational benefits associated with using the product.


Your Brand as a Party Guest

Have you ever been at a party and found yourself stuck talking with that guy who just goes on endlessly about himself? Everything he has ever done, every opinion he has and aspect of his life is hurled toward you at breakneck speed. When you do have a chance to finally interject your own thought or comment, he has the uncanny ability to use this to talk even more about himself.

This isn't a conversation, it's just one way dialogue. He has not engaged you one bit or learned a single thing about you. He believes he is earning your respect and friendship by impressing you with his accomplishments. In reality, you just want to exit this situation the first chance you get. We've all met this guy.

Well, this concept is applicable to your brand and marketing communications. Be a conversationalist, not a talker. Engage your audience. Tell them a little about yourself but then figure out what they like, what they want and make sure you speak with them from that point of view. Acknowledge their needs, wishes and challenges. They will think "that brand really gets me. They pay attention and listen. They are going to make my life easier or better and I'm going to do business with them".

This 'party guy' concept can also applied to brands who are:
• The yellers (they use oversized logos, unneeded exclamation points etc.),
• The pushy ones (overly aggressive emailers, social media abusers)
• The poorly dressed and groomed (poorly written and designed materials)

Most people want to surround themselves with people (and brands) who are enjoyable to speak with and pleasant to be around. Now, go be that brand.