Be a Top Social Business (Digital Friday/Positioning)

Once a Day Marketing™ featured video blog: Becoming a Social Business

Hello. I'm Jim Glover that branding guy with Once a Day Marketing™.  Today is Digital Friday and we are continuing our conversation on the importance of being a social business.

Becoming a social business is more than just using social media channels like twitter and Facebook.  It means you have made a serious commitment to social media and to engaging customers, vendors and partners and your employees through these tools.  A social company is seeking to be an industry leader in social media as well.

The Dachis Group is a company that tracks social media businesses and publishes an index which rates the top social businesses.  This week’s list includes Disney at #1, followed by Viacom and News Corp rounding out the top three.  Google, Sony, Nike and the Microsoft are also in the top 10.  When you consider the companies named, it’s not surprising that they are leading as social businesses.

For these big brands, it’s about more than just having the resources to engage social media; they understand the importance.  They know being a social business builds brand awareness, customer loyalty and increases mind share and advocacy.

Once a Day Marketing™ positions brands to become #1 in the minds of target customers.  Visit our website at www.onceadaymarketing.com.  Contact James Glover at (505) 501-1330 or email glover@onceadaymarketing.com.  Listen to Ask Those Branding Guys™ every Monday at 11:00am (MST) streaming live on SantaFe.com KVSF 101.5 FM.

© 2013 Once a Day Marketing™.  All rights reserved.

Choosing the Right Branding Consultant (Recon Thursday/Process)

Once a Day Marketing™ featured video blog: Selecting Your Branding Consultant

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy for Once a Day Marketing™.  Today is Recon Thursday and we are continuing our series about outsourcing branding and marketing support for your company with a discussion around Branding Consultants.

In Part I we examined assessing whether or not your current marketing is effective and if it makes sense to keep it in house or bring in an outside consultant.  When you decide to hire a branding consultant, focus on the following four areas in your evaluation of the individual or company you are interviewing.

First is rapport.  Have you established a relationship and get along with this individual or company?  You will be working closely with them so it is very important that you work well together.  Your branding consultant should get you excited about your brand and branding in the future.  Number two; review examples of their past work and make sure you like it.  Don’t assume that because they are talented they will be able to provide what you want.

Next look at their approach, the steps they will take to complete your scope of work.  Fourth, call/review references, look at the age of the references and if they are not recent, request more up to date contacts.

Once you engage a consultant clearly define the scope of work.  Discuss fees; every company is different, they may bill you on an hourly basis, a project basis or retainer.  Decide what will work the best for your budget.

Establish a timeline.  I recommend that you consider a phased delivery.  Don’t encompass all the work into one milestone to be delivered at the end of the project.  Rather, establish a number of smaller milestones.  Review and approve one milestone at a time and then move on to the next.  Lastly, be very clear on the deliverable or deliverables the consultant will turn over to you when the work is complete.

Once a Day Marketing™ positions brands to become #1 in the minds of target customers. Visit our website at www.onceadaymarketing.com.  Contact James Glover at (505) 501-1330 or email glover@onceadaymarketing.com.  Listen to Ask Those Branding Guys™ every Monday at 11am (MST) streaming live on SantaFe.com KVSF 101.5 FM.

© 2013 Once a Day Marketing™.  All rights reserved.

Once a Day Marketing™ featured video blog: Developing Your Marketing Action Plan

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing™.  Today is Action Wednesday and we are discussing the importance of creating a good marketing action plan.

The marketing action plan (MAP) is a valuable tool to identify the important marketing action items for your brand.  What we love about a MAP is that it centralizes all of these tasks in one place.  Using this tool enables you to prioritize which items to do first and which will be completed later.

Let’s take a look at the elements of a good marketing action plan.  We use project management software, such as FastTrack, to maintain our MAP and break tasks down into three categories; short term, intermediate and long term.

Working with key members of your team, create a column for tasks and describe each task is in as much detail as required.  Next, use a column to identify the responsible party.  This is the individual in your organization who is the champion of the task and owns its timely completion.  List start and finish dates for each item.  Include budget or costs where applicable so you know the amount of resources to allocate toward the task.

When the marketing action plan is complete, share it with the appropriate individuals in your organization and review it regularly to establish progress.  When your team members have input into developing the marketing action plan and have committed to a timeline for task completion, hold responsible individuals accountable for missed targets.  When team members know they are going to be held responsible they are going to get things done.

Your task for today is to do is build your marketing action plan.  The very first task on the plan should be to brand every single day by following Once a Day Marketing.

Once a Day Marketing™ positions brands to become #1 in the minds of target customers.  Visit our website at www.onceadaymarketing.com.  Contact James Glover at (505) 501-1330 or email glover@onceadaymarketing.com.  Listen to Ask Those Branding Guys™ every Monday at 11:00am (MST) streaming live on SantaFe.com KVSF 101.5 FM.

© 2013 Once a Day Marketing™.  All rights reserved.

Branding an Art Gallery in Santa Fe (Strategic Tuesday/Positioning)

Listen to our featured Ask Those Branding Guys radio show podcast: Marketing is a Work of Art

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing™.  Today is Strategic Tuesday and we are discussing branding an art gallery.

On our radio show Ask Those Branding Guys, we spoke with Darrell Hilley, Owner of the Santa Fe Art Collector Gallery.  Darrell shares his insight into what it takes to successfully brand and market a gallery in a highly competitive market.
 

Santa Fe Art Collector represents approximately 35 diverse artists; Hilley shares that it is essential to appeal to a broad spectrum of taste in order to draw a wider consumer base.  Also, he recently moved the gallery to an area with higher foot traffic of more targeted customers and has found the change in location to be very advantageous.

Hilley watches the trends in the market such as the increasing appeal of unique and colorful pieces as well as consumer interest in lower priced pieces and responds accordingly.  Consumers are now more drawn by the particular piece than to a specific artist.

With a majority sales to out of state customers, Santa Fe Art Collector uses printed media targeted at collectors as the preferred form of advertising.  The gallery does have a website, however, customers don’t generally purchase a piece sight unseen.

Glover commented that leveraging the collector magazines is essential to define your brand along with other large galleries.  If a presence is not maintained in this arena, the gallery will not be on the radar of potential customers planning their visit using this medium.

Enjoy the podcast.

Once a Day Marketing™ positions brands to become #1 in the minds of target customers.  Visit our website at www.onceadaymarketing.com.  Contact James Glover at (505) 501-1330 or email glover@onceadaymarketing.com.  Listen to Ask Those Branding Guys™ every Monday at noon (MDT) streaming live on SantaFe.com KVSF 101.5 FM.

© 2013 Once a Day Marketing™.  All rights reserved.

Bling Can Enhance Impulse Buying (Smart Monday/Promotion)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy for Once a Day Marketing™.  Today is Smart Monday and we are looking at how bling (the flashy, ostentatious flaunting of things) can enhance impulse buying.

Recently we attended a branding webinar hosted by Guy Kawasaki, a top marketing guru.  He shared adding bling to a blog will visually attract followers.  Great advice, Guy, thanks.

We would add that bling works on just about all branding and marketing because we are such a visually oriented society.  When in line to check out at an Old Navy store this past weekend, we had to pass down a long aisle of merchandise before we arrived at the cash register.  Talk about bling.

From our picture you can see Minnie Mouse and Marvel Comics on display to entice customers as they wait to make their purchase.  This is great example of using bling to enhance impulse buying.  It would be interesting to know how many items are sold from this long display of "last chance" merchandise.  One thing is sure, Old Navy is using this tactic because it works for them.

If you want to entice more impulse buying, follow the practices of the experts like Old Navy, Barnes and Noble, and even your local grocery store of parading your customers past a display of enticing merchandise.  Let us know how it goes.

Once a Day Marketing™ positions brands to become #1 in the minds of target customers.  Visit our website at www.onceadaymarketing.com.  Contact James Glover at (505) 501-1330 or email glover@onceadaymarketing.com.  Listen to Ask Those Branding Guys™ every Monday at noon (MDT) streaming live on SantaFe.com KVSF 101.5 FM.

© 2013 Once a Day Marketing™.  All rights reserved.

Using Social Media to Make Your Business Better (Digital Friday/Process)

Hello. I'm Jim Glover that branding guy with Once a Day Marketing™.  Today is Digital Friday we are looking at how to use social media to make your business better.

Fortune Magazine recently recognized 5 companies who are best-in-class using social media to make their existing business practices better.  The 5 best-in-class categories included 1) Customer Service, 2) Marketing, 3) Small Business, 4) Collaboration and 5) Hiring.

The all-star in Customer Service is JetBlue, who always responds in real time to customer messages.  Best in Marketing goes to American Express for continuing to push the envelope in digital marketing.

First Round Capital is best in Small Business for its private digital network to support the funding needs of its portfolio companies.  Best in Collaboration goes to Facebook who uses its own social networking to make its employees more efficient.

And lastly, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory achieved best in Hiring for using forums and groups to locate hard to find candidates.

The main point here is that these companies aren't just using social media to promote their brands, they are using social networks to improve their businesses.  Something to think about.

Once a Day Marketing™ positions brands to become #1 in the minds of target customers.  Visit our website at www.onceadaymarketing.com.  Contact James Glover at (505) 501-1330 or email glover@onceadaymarketing.com.  Listen to Ask Those Branding Guys™ every Monday at noon (MDT) streaming live on SantaFe.com KVSF 101.5 FM.

© 2013 Once a Day Marketing™.  All rights reserved.

Should You Outsource Your Marketing (Recon Thursday/Process)

Once a Day Marketing™ featured video blog: In-House or Outsourced Marketing

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy for Once a Day Marketing™.  Today is Recon Thursday and we are beginning a series around assessing your branding and marketing to determine whether or not it may be advantageous to seek outside support.

If you have been following Once a Day Marketing™ you understand why branding and marketing are so important.  To ensure you are moving in the right direction, evaluate the results of your efforts and determine if you are attaining the desired results.

Here are some questions to consider when determining whether or not you should manage your own marketing or outsource it.

-          Do you have a marketing plan in place?

-          Are you consistently implementing that plan?

-          Do target customers clearly understand your brand?

-          Are you satisfied with creative material (website, ad copy, brochures)?

-          Are customers responding by calling, buying your product, visiting your website, etc.?

If you are honest in your assessment, then you know if in-house branding and marketing is working or whether you should bring somebody in to support your efforts.  If you decide to hire outside assistance who should that be?  When should you bring them in?  What should you have them do?

Stay tuned for additional blogs in this series where we will discuss the different type of professional support and provide information to enable you to make informed decisions.

Once a Day Marketing™ positions brands to become #1 in the minds of target customers.  Visit our website at www.onceadaymarketing.com.  Contact James Glover at (505) 501-1330 or email glover@onceadaymarketing.com.  Listen to Ask Those Branding Guys™ every Monday at noon (MDT) streaming live on SantaFe.com KVSF 101.5 FM.

© 2013 Once a Day Marketing™.  All rights reserved.