Aug 20

The New Responsibility In Marketing

By Joshua Claflin Marketing

Marketing is changing for the better. People are fed up with empty promises, bad customer service and products that are unhealthy and hard to buy.

There’s a new responsibility in marketing. It’s about helping your customers at an individual level, solving their problems for little to no cost; and then serving those customers with polite, happy, helpful people. These new emerging imperatives are fueling some of today’s most successful companies, and setting consumer expectations for decades to come.

In this article, I discuss 4 major trends influencing today’s consumer behavior and the companies and thought leaders who are out in front of them.

Say buh-bye to old school marketing which suffocates people with the same old promises and mass messaging. Sayonara to the generic term of “consumer” that has given way to the new term “people.” Adios to the days where you could just hire someone on a whim to fill a position—regardless of whether they were the right person or not. Gone are the days when no one understood the word “brand,” let alone the process of “branding.”

We are living in a time of increased deception and broken promises. We feel it and see it in the world around us. Our world is becoming more dangerous and we have no time for false promises and slick advertising. From our leaders and politicians, to the news media and brands we rely on to help us survive—things have definitely changed in the way we perceive our world.

The following statistics show that, for the most part, the days of deceptive, beguiling practices have ended.

Only 39% of Americans said the economy is getting better while 56% said it is getting worse (Gallup)
Only 27% of likely U.S. voters think the country is heading in the right direction (Rassmusen)
Young adults under 35 are saving a whole lot more lately (WSJ)
76% of respondents said ads in general were either “very exaggerated” or “somewhat exaggerated” (Forbes)
The vast majority think that all cleaning and weight loss ads are photoshopped (Forbes)
Presidential approval rating: 41% (Gallup)
Congress approval rating: 15% (Gallup)
U.S. Distrust in Media Hits New High (Gallup)
Only 2% of cold calls end up in an appointment (Hubspot)
223 Million people subscribing to the FTC “Do Not Call List” (Today)
86% of people skip television commercials (The Guardian)
44% of direct mail is never opened (Mashable)

All people struggle to find truth; and as the above statistics show—we rarely ever get it. But when we see something that appears to be authentic and truthful, it shines like a beacon in the myriad of untruths.

If the promise is broken and we get burned, however, we turn against the offender publicly by letting our 500+ friends on Facebook know how we feel. (Source: Marketing Charts)

Years of broken promises, intrusiveness, bad customer service and outright lies have finally resulted in this shift in consumer behavior.

Consumer mass marketing is no longer effective. Companies must begin to care about people as individuals.

Trend #1: The Thank You Economy
In his book, The Thank You Economy, Gary Vaynerchuk reveals how companies big and small can scale personal, one-on-one attention to their entire customer base, no matter how large, using the same social media platforms that carry consumer word of mouth. The Thank You Economy offers compelling, data-driven evidence which indicates that we have entered into an entirely new business era. The companies that see the biggest returns won’t be the ones that can throw the most money at an advertising campaign, but those that can prove they care about their customers more than anyone else. (Source: Amazon)

Trend #2: Make products which are good for people and provide them conveniently
Josh Tetrick, CEO of Hampton Creek, who‘s mission is about bringing healthier and more affordable food to everyone, everywhere states, “It turns out that when you create a path that makes it easy (and even profitable) for good people to do good things — they will do it. Give people an affordable and convenient path to do the right thing — and they will. Almost every single time. Make the path to do the right thing expensive and inconvenient — and they won’t.” (Huffington Post)

The other day I flew from my home in Indianapolis to my hometown of Denver. Driving up into Boulder you begin to notice a lot more options to eat healthy. I chose to drop in on one of my favorite places—Jamba Juice—for a smoothie. Delicious, convenient, good customer service, healthy and at a great price. Not only did it cure my hunger, but I felt better about myself after I consumed it.

Contrast this with a town like Indianapolis where there is a Steak n’ Shake or some other fast food joint on every corner. Convenience can outweigh doing what’s right for our bodies.

When given the opportunity, people are more likely to make good choices. Brands that provide products and services which are good for you, affordable and convenient to get are changing the marketing and business landscape.

Trend #3: The Rise of Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is a process which attracts people to your product or service by providing the answers to people’s problems. By providing a variety of content like video, DIY blogs, ebooks and whitepapers, brands help solve their customers’ problems, which in turn creates trust and a relationship over time. This methodology has been so successful that over 60% of companies have now implemented inbound marketing as part of their overall strategy. (Source: HubSpot). Inbound marketing holds off on the sales pitch used by traditional methods like cold calling, print, online ads and television commercials. It emphasizes the customer more and the sale less. This helps companies create trust and help their customers more effectively. Many companies are moving towards the inbound methodology and as a result (thanks to Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, founders of Hubspot) marketing is changing for the better. Change is good for the customer, and for the marketer that must quantify ROI.

Trend #4: Your People Are Your Brand
With the urgent need to attract and hire the best talent into your organization, brands must realize that their people impact their brand’s performance as much or more than any other factor.

Zappos is a prime example. Zappos hiring processes and their “we’ll pay you to quit” policy forces Zappos to hire the right people. Their focus on hiring for brand-first is changing the way companies keep their brand promises. (Source: Fast Company)

Russ Minary, Founder of Brand+People™ states, “Your people are the key differentiator in a marketplace full of identical competitors.” There are very few truly unique products or services in the marketplace. So your people will make all the difference in creating your brand perception. Companies that have a strong employer and corporate brand will attract top talent, establish a positive reputation, achieve increased profitability, maximize their brand perception, reduce turnover costs and retain more high-performing employees, which results in happier, more loyal customers.

Let’s be clear: this is not a message to just make us feel all warm and fuzzy. Those who watch the budgets are getting very interested, too. In today’s new responsibility marketplace, the company with the top talent and happiest employees will see the impact on its bottom line.

In her book; Make More Money By Making Your Employees Happy, Dr. Nelson cites a study from the Jackson Organization (a survey research consultancy acquired by Healthstream, Inc.), which shows, “companies that effectively appreciate employee value enjoy a return on equity & assets more than triple that experienced by firms that don’t. When looking at Fortune’s ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’ stock prices rose an average of 14% per year from 1998-2005, compared to 6% for the overall market.” (Source: Forbes)

Some CEO and CMO tenures are increasing because savvier companies are using inbound marketing and the tactics listed above to make marketing better. (Source: WSJ)

Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first. – Simon Sinek

The foundational principles of the new responsibility in marketing are providing personal, one-on-one attention; solving your customer problems; and delivering your brand with good people. This is the critical combination to marketing success in today’s marketplace.

Marketers who see these trends and take action will fare well in their efforts to get results. We need better, healthier and more helpful marketing. With a little patience and thought we can change marketing—and perhaps the world.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on how marketing is changing for the better. Please post your comments below.

Jul 23

The 5 Benefits Of Blogging For Your Business

By Joshua Claflin Business, Inbound Marketing

Starting a business blog is tough. When I first started blogging for my branding agency it was difficult to generate ideas consistently and then write clearly and concisely about them; but over time, I became better—and faster. Blogging for business starts with the intention to solve your customers problems and to answer their hardest questions.

I set a goal to become a better writer. No matter what it took, I committed to writing at least once a week, twice if I got lucky. Every time I came across an interesting piece of content that sparked an idea I wrote it down. Over a few months, I had a growing list of healthy topics.

This in turn allowed me to create a content calendar that aligned with my inbound marketing campaign efforts which turned my idea list into a blogging factory.

I love this video from HubSpot that explains how to become a better writer:

Like training for a marathon, it’s hard at first, but you eventually become stronger and faster.

1. You stay on the cutting edge of your profession 
Inbound marketing and blogging forces you to change your mindset about marketing. You become a natural curator of content as you peruse daily articles and blogs. By committing to blogging that leads to the search of new ideas, you become keenly aware of your industry and your client’s industries.

2. You have more things to talk, post and tweet about 
Blogging creates the basis of your social media efforts. By posting and tweeting your content, you begin to attract visitors and gain followers.

3. Solve your customer’s problems 
By blogging on topics that solves and answers your customer’s toughest questions, you become—over time—a recognized resource and expert.

4. Generate website traffic
Blogging is the secret sauce to generating traffic to your website. By blogging on topics that answers your customer’s questions, you create a bastion of posts that expand your keywords’ digital footprint on Google and other search engines. You increase your website’s authority by generating inbound links, social media shares and authorship through Google+.

Check out these stats:

37% of marketers say blogs are the most valuable type of content marketing. (Source)
Brands that create 15 blog posts per month average 1,200 new leads per month. (Source)
B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who do not blog. (Source)
Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links. (Source)
Blog posts incorporating video attract 3 times as many inbound links as blog posts without video. (Source)

5. Establish thought leadership
By blogging consistently, you quickly begin to establish thought leadership within your industry and amongst your prospects. By earning followers on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, you begin to establish top-shelf awareness that allows you to constantly remind your prospects of your products or services.

In conclusion, the task of taking on blogging for your business may make you gag, but once you get the ball rolling, it becomes a habit that is easier to maintain over time. The benefits of being on the edge of your profession, having interesting topics to grow your social media networks, generating traffic and establishing thought leadership is an essential component of doing business with today’s skeptical customer.

Interested in learning more about our Indianapolis or Nashville inbound marketing agency? Contact us today to learn how we can help your business through blogging.

Jun 19

How Long Does It Take for Inbound Marketing  To Work?

By Joshua Claflin Inbound Marketing

Are you considering inbound marketing to generate traffic, convert leads to customers and build your business? As you may already know, inbound marketing requires you to change your mindset in how you approach marketing. Instead of the old outbound marketing “flash in the pan” methods of direct mail, print advertising or cold calling – typical inbound marketing programs require a 12-month commitment.

In order to get a jumpstart on inbound—I’ve listed 6 factors that will help you get up and running with inbound marketing sooner rather than later.

1. Is your brand distinct?
Today, the ability to stand out in a crowded marketplace is absolute necessary if you are planning to grow your business. If your positioning is weak or your brand undefined, it will make it harder for your customers to understand what makes you different and memorable. Having a well-defined and authentic brand is the first place to start when beginning any kind of marketing – inbound or outbound.

2. Do you know your buyer persona?  
All successful inbound marketing campaigns begin with the buyer persona. A buyer persona is a fictitious representation of your ideal customer – notice I did not say “target market”. Your buyer persona must be laser focused on the questions, needs and pain points of your customer to be effective. By identifying your buyer persona now, you’ll be able to create content faster.

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3. Is your website ugly?
With 60% of all purchases starting with a web search—all inbound marketing programs begin and end with your website. A well designed website is necessary to attract, engage and communicate your product and services. If your website is ugly –fix it! In additions it will also need an adequate content management system like WordPress in order to adjust quickly to any course changes during the 12-month program.

4. Are your search engine rankings strong? 
If you just launched a new website it may take longer to get your website ranked on the first page of Google. Google assigns more authority to websites that have been around longer. It will also depend if you’ve done any SEO in the past. If you have strong rankings at the beginning of an inbound marketing program, you will see quicker results.

5. Have you been blogging? 
According to HubSpot, companies that blog have far better marketing results. Specifically, the average company that blogs has; 55% more visitors; 97% more inbound links; 434% more indexed pages if done consistently. Blogging is the primary method for driving traffic and serves as the platform for your social media activity. Blogging must be done 1-2x minimum per week to activate inbound marketing’s traffic generating and SEO power.

6. Do you have the time?
If you can’t seem to get the time to blog, distribute and promote your content—then inbound marketing will take longer if not fail all together. The secret to inbound marketing is to create consistent valuable content based on solving your customer problems. Consider hiring an inbound marketing agency to help you generate content.

The bottom line 
It will take anywhere from 4-9 months depending on your ability to address the above points quickly to start seeing results with inbound marketing. Most companies will start out highly motivated—but after 3 months give up. Inbound marketing is a marathon not a sprint—but like any good endeavor, the results are well worth it. Here’s what you can expect:

Proved ROI 
Month over month organic traffic increases (net-net gains) 
A steady flow of leads
Qualified customers based on your ideal buyer persona
Higher search engine rankings 
Establish thought leadership in your industry
Gain more followers on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn 
Crush your competition

If you’re interested in exploring how your business could benefit from inbound marketing, please contact our Indianapolis or Denver inbound marketing agency for a complimentary, no-haggle inbound marketing assessment.

Free Download:
Inbound Marketing Tool Kit

Running a successful marketing campaign for your business is all about having the right tools.
This guide will dive into which marketing tools you should keep at the ready.

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Brand Development Inbound Marketing Consultant

By Josh Claflin, Brand Development, Inbound Marketing & Creative Strategy
Josh helps brands who are struggling to develop their brand; grow, stabilize or increase profits through their websites; increase revenue through online channels and enter the digital era of marketing.

Follow @joshuajclaflin

May 23

Why Your Brand Rolled Out The Back Door And Down The Street – Part 2

By Joshua Claflin Brand Development

In my last post, I talked about 4 things to keep in mind to make the most of your brand development investment when rolling out your new brand to your employees and how to create lasting brand change. I discussed the importance of getting your employees’ buy-in early and introducing the brand correctly.

In this post, I’ll give you 4 things to remember when rolling out the brand externally to your customers. Depending on what kind of company you are, changing your brand can be minimal to very complex.

1. Release brand standards to employees, vendors and partners 
Instruct your branding agency to create brand standards and guidelines. This will contain rules on how to use the new brand’s visual elements for efficiency. Make sure to publish and deliver the guidelines to all brand ambassadors in the company—especially the sales and marketing folks. Make the brand standards accessible via a password protected website or a downloadable document. Announce the brand standards by email and who to contact for brand approvals.

2. Make it all about your customers
Unlike your employees who will typically push back on the new branding, your customers will typically welcome the change. Once again, make the external rollout all about them. Communicate why the change was made. Utilize social media, email and other channels to reach your customers. Invite your customers to visit the new website. Careful planning must be made so that there is no disconnect. If your brand includes product packaging, make sure to communicate the old and the new so no brand equity is lost in the transition.

3. Pick the right media mix
Larger companies will conduct million dollar multi-media campaigns to announce their new brands. They may hold special events or create a Q&A hotline. Create targeted messaging and repeat it over and over again for at least 9 to 14 months.

UPS Brand When UPS rebranded in 2007, their television ads showed their old logo changing from the drab 2-dimensional package icon to the more stylized 3-dimensional shield icon for at least a year. Their trucks seemed to be changed over the same amount of time. But who could forget their brilliant whiteboard commercials? They coupled their new branding with a new ad campaign communicating the company’s new positioning and tagline – What can brown do for you? (Which was later changed to We love logistics.)

For small to medium sizes companies—a typical press release will suffice that corresponds with the launch of your new website, email announcement. You may want to consider a soft launch of your website to work out any bugs before announcing it to the masses.

4. Pick the right time
Be sure to schedule plenty of time to conduct all the necessary activities. Think through the rollout by starting with the end in mind. What is the goal, who needs to know, how will they find out and where? Look at this as you would an advertising campaign, because that’s exactly what it is. Pick the right time to introduce your brand, either at a planned customer event or trade show. Time it to maximize your message and marketing dollars.

In conclusion, next to your people, your brand is your most valuable asset. Create and deliver the brand standards and guidelines, make the new brand all about your customers, pick the right media mix and time it with an upcoming customer event for maximum benefit.

For more information on how we can help you create real brand change within your organization, contact our agency for a complimentary brand assessment.

May 17

Why Your Brand Rolled Out The Back Door And Down The Street – Part 1

By Joshua Claflin Brand Development, Branding, Business

Completing the brand development process is a major milestone in any company’s history. After months of work it becomes time to introduce and roll it out to your employees and then your customers and the public in general. However after the party is over and the smoke has cleared, the brand is usually forgotten and your people return to status quo and it’s business as usual. Why?

In the first of two posts, here are 4 things to keep in mind to make the most of your brand development investment when rolling out your new brand internally and creating real brand change.

1. Get employee buy-in early
To make your brand rollout successful, get your employees involved early in the process. Identify the people in your company who are the centers of influence. Create a team of brand ambassadors. By getting your employees feedback and input—you will give them ownership of the new brand. Their feedback will provide the framework and direction of the changes that need to be made. When they see that the changes they suggested have been incorporated, they will be more likely to embrace the new brand. They will also act as advocates and defenders of the new brand when and if water cooler discussions turn negative about the coming changes.

2. Introduce the brand correctly
Also begin thinking about the brand rollout event early in the process. It can sometimes take months of planning depending on your budget. Each company is different, but you typically want to start by creating some buzz. Try to think of ways to get your employees excited about the new brand. Communicate some of the key benefits and changes coming and how they contributed to the new direction. Make the brand rollout party all about them. This will be your first chance to introduce the new brand and you’ll want to take some time to really think through how to best present it.

3. Leadership does the honors
The new brand should be introduced by the CEO or president. The brand development process is a top-down initiative and you’ll want to utilize the C-Suite’s influence. Take the steps needed to educate your employees on what a brand is and why it is important. After a little branding 101, go through the main communication points of the brand. Especially communicate what has changed and what will stay the same. Remember to communicate the purpose and the “why” behind the “what”. Seek to inspire through purpose.

4. Create “the change” through your employees 
Lets face it, change is hard. Most companies—after the brand is rolled out—return to status quo. To create real brand change, new standards must be communicated and implemented within your workforce. To move the culture, changes must be made at the people level. So for example, you may want to consider the following:

Through natural attrition, begin to replace the employees who leave with people who adhere and align with the brand’s new values.
Use assessments to accurately determine the “jobfit” and “brandfit” of each candidate.
Invest in employer branding to attract top talent.
Train tenured employees to adapt to the changes being made.
Pay employees to leave who are not adopting the change (See Zappos and Amazon examples)

The company with the best people wins. To create real brand change and to make the most of your brand development investment—start with your people early in the process and continue to build a culture based on your customers. Anything else is just pretty words and pictures.

In my next post, I’ll talk about the external rollout process.

For more information on how we can help you create real brand change within your organization, contact our agency for a complimentary brand assessment.

May 06

How To Write An Awesome Tagline

By Joshua Claflin Brand Development

Coming up with a tagline for your business can be a little difficult—but it isn’t as hard as you might think. A good tagline can influence customer behavior and give them an understanding of what your product, service or brand is about. Here are a couple ones you might recognize:

Just Do It.
Think Different.
The Ultimate Driving Machine.
Like No Other Place On Earth.
We Bring Good Things To Life.

Taglines influence consumers’ behavior by evoking an emotional response. A tagline is a short phrase that captures a company’s brand essence, personality, and positioning, and distinguishes the company from its competitors. (Source: Defining Brand Identity)

In this post, we are going to write a tagline for a fictitious pen company called Penly. We’ll go through 6 steps using Penly as an example that you can then use to craft your own tagline.

1. What makes your product or service unique?
To start, you first need to understand what makes your product or service unique. Does it contain some kind of unique material? Does it have some kind of competitive advantage? Is it shaped differently? Does it take a different approach than your competitors? Write down 1-3 things that makes your product or service unique.

For our pen company, it is 1. design, 2. ink color and, 3. balance. Our pen is slightly heavier in the middle so that it is perfectly balanced. Our pen slows the writer down that helps them to write better and clearer. Studies have shown penmanship is affected because people write too fast. Yet, it’s not too heavy to cramp the users’ wrist after long periods of note taking.

2. Write down 1-3 value propositions
A value proposition is a promise of value you intend to deliver or provide to your customer. It is the value or benefit they will receive from using your product or service.

For our pen, our value propositions are: 1. smoother writing, 2. classy design and, 3. darker more prestige looking inks.

3. Position your product or service
Positioning is a brand’s attempt to occupy a market niche, idea or a distinct impression in your customer’s mind. Positioning is one the most critical elements in the brand strategy development process.

It starts by understanding points 1 and 2 and your competitor’s positioning—because two competitors cannot occupy the same position. In our pen example, there are three main competitors in the category. Go Pen positions themselves as an everyday “get-the-job-done” kinda pen. They’ve been in the pen making business since the 1940s and hold most of the market share. Our second competitor, Big Pen positions their pens as the “industrial pen”—and is pitched towards the working man. It’s got a thicker grip and is used with metal casing to show its ruggedness. The third pen company—Lil’Pen positions their pens as a cheap, buy-in-bulk pen. Nothing fancy about Lil’Pen —a pen is a pen.

As a marketer or business owner you want to try to figure out where the “whitespace” is within your market and how to provide a better product to an audience who has a need. What niche or space are you going occupy? What makes your product different and viable? Typically, you’ll want to conduct some customer research, look at industry trends, conduct some test marketing and other activities to determine where the logical place is to position your pen.

After conducting our own research, we’ve found that there is a segment of the pen market that is vastly underserved. That segment is the professional segment: ages 35-50, male or female, typically college grads, holds an executive position or has a professional degree like an C.P.A., M.B.A., M.D., J.D. etc. and who tend to write a lot. For the most part it seems this segment may benefit from our pen’s unique characteristics.

We will define our positioning statement next, but first we need to take a look at our buyer persona and what makes our pen the “only”.

4. Define your buyer persona
Next, you must understand your customer—or buyer persona. You must know how to best talk to your customers and where best to reach them. You must seek to address their pain points and solve their problems. You must find a way to appeal to their aspirations, character qualities and understand what motivates them. For our pen, it’s about giving them a fine writing tool that makes them more productive, take better notes and feel a bit smarter when they are holding our pen. It may even lend them some status when they lay their pen down at the meeting table.

5. Define your only.
According to Marty Neumeier, the author of Zag, an onliness statement is something that no one else can say about you. Using our pen as an example, our onliness statement looks like this:

Penly is the only pen company that helps professionals take better notes, be more productive and write smarter.

Notice our onliness statement contains who our customer is, what the product is and how it is different in the marketplace. You can replace the words that are highlighted and add in your own company name, customer and value propositions.

6. Distill your tagline from your onliness statement
Now, we must cut the onliness statement down to its bare essence. Using some of the words above, try to distill the overarching theme into a few words. Play around and try to come up with something that is smooth, a bit clever and catchy. So for example:

Penly, The Professionals Pen
Penly, Better Notes
Penly, Write Smarter
Penly, Write Better
Penly, Now You’re Writing

Attach your tagline with your name to see it and hear how it sounds.

Those are a few off the cuff…but for this example, I think we’ll go with Write Smarter. It captures the essence of our pen, tells something about what our pen does and how it helps our buyer persona and how we want them to feel when they use our pen.

So you see, coming up with a tagline isn’t all that difficult—right? You just need to take the necessary steps to think through it by boiling down your product or service to its essence. By identifying what makes your product or service unique, what value it delivers to your customers, what position it holds in their mind, who your buyer persona is, what your only is, you can distill your message down to a simple mantra that connects your product to your customer succinctly and clearly that creates value.

Struggling to connect your brand to your customers or looking for a unique tagline?

Apr 16

The 7 Factors For Rebranding

By Joshua Claflin Brand Development

There are many factors to consider when evaluating the decision to rebrand your company. Typically you’re gripped with a sense of bewilderment as the word ‘rebrand’ typically means ‘change.’ This is always difficult, especially when you’re the one responsible for the success and longevity of your company.

Faced with undulating marketplace circumstances—a rebrand may be the only viable option you have to remain competitive. The entrance of new competitors, commoditization, internal changes and changing customer attitudes may have weakened your company’s ability to accurately articulate your unique value proposition. Perhaps you’ve been knocked off by faster, more agile competitors with more aggressive marketing tactics than your own or you let things get away on you by not keeping up to date on massive disruption that is taking place across various industries.

Whatever the case, re-branding can be a good thing. It signifies a stage in your business’ maturity and growth. It is an opportunity to more closely examine your mission, purpose and the betterment of your company.

Brand development can be a catalyst for innovation—an opportunity to develop your current processes. It can bring clarity and alignment to you and your stakeholders and spur employee motivation. In the end this tunes up your company’s internal engine where the end result is customer satisfaction and increased profitability.

To help you understand the main reasons most business owners choose to rebrand, we’ve listed 7 factors that will help you determine if now is the time to consider a rebrand.
 

Famous Corporate Rebrands

1. Name change
 Our name no longer fits who we are.

Naming is a long and difficult process. Most viable domain names have been taken or are listed as premium listings because of their necessity and acclaim. Be prepared to pay for a high-quality name or be prepared to make one up. Start at Name.com to check out the availability of your domain. Work with a branding agency to help you come up with a meaningful, memorable and viable choice. Your name is the most important branding element of your business. A recent example is when Anderson Consulting became Accenture. Anderson Consulting changed their name due to global market expansion. “On January 1, 2001 Andersen Consulting adopted its current name, “Accenture”. The word “Accenture” is supposedly derived from “Accent on the future”. The name “Accenture” was submitted by Kim Petersen, a Danish employee from the company’s Oslo, Norway office, as a result of an internal competition. Accenture felt that the name should represent its will to be a global consulting leader and high performer, and also intended that the name should not be offensive in any country in which Accenture operates. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

2. Revitalize a brand
 Our identity does not represent us any longer.

Due to the natural development, evolution and innovation of your products and services new vertical markets and channels will emerge that prove profitable changing the course of your company. You may have received feedback from your customers or have seen a decline in web traffic. Perhaps you were a packaged product company that has now evolved into a virtual product. The move to the virtual environment will need to communicate a different message then one sold in a brick-n-mortar. When in doubt, interview and survey your customers to understand if your brand is still connecting to deliver value.

3. Revitalize a brand identity
Our identity is outdated.

Brand identity is a mixture of the visual representation of the product and service you provide and about how that product/service relates to, characterizes and represents your customers. Have your customers changed? Once again when in doubt, interview and survey your customers to understand if the brand is still connecting to deliver value. Does it need a new look or a whole new service offering. In a recent example, Walgreens completely changed its course to remain relevant and to remain true to its brand values by completely eliminating tobacco from their stores and redesigning the customer experience and adding clinics due to the sweeping health care law.

Logo swooshes gone wild

4. Create an integrated system
Our visual materials do not look the same.

Over the years as marketing managers and designers have come and gone, they’ve left their own interpretations of your company’s brand on your materials. If standards were not put in place at the initial development of your brand—chances are your materials look inconsistent, scattered and unfocused.

BRANDING TIP: Still using swooshes and drop shadows? These were hot design trends in the late nineties and early 2000’s. Today, flat design is ‘in’ lead by top global brands like Apple, Windows and Google.

5. When companies merge
We need a new brand to represent the new company.

Perhaps the #1 reason to rebrand is when two companies merge. Think Disney and Pixar. Sirius and XM Radio. Exxon and Mobil. When two cultures collide, key staff members are let go, leadership styles and philosophies change, everything is turned upside down and inside out. This especially takes a mental toll on your employees. Not knowing what is happening in the C-Suite, guesses, estimations and imaginations run wild that result in anxiousness, worry and loss productivity. Communication is key in this time of transition. The brand development process will help you align and get your new team on the same page quicker.

6. When internal teams lack clarity
 Our employees lack direction, engagement and purpose.

One of the most important outcomes of the brand strategy process is employee clarity and understanding of the company’s mission and purpose. The brand development process will allow you to re-discover the purpose of your brand—the why behind the what—providing direction, increasing employee engagement and purpose.

7. Attract Talent 
We are not hiring the right people.

A strong corporate brand is helpful to attracting talent. However an employer brand must also be taken into consideration when rebranding. You must also define the values of your culture and why someone would want to work for you. This can only be fostered by the corporate brand’s values and how they relate to your customers. The key to delighting your customers is to delight your employees. Outside of the normal perks, you must also communicate the purpose through your employer branding to attract the right talent.

BRANDING TIP: Delight your employees and you will delight your customers.

In conclusion, when faced with the possibility of a rebrand, always start with your customers and employees. Their responses to your inquiries will give you the understanding you need to intelligently make the decision to rebrand. If your name needs changing, your brand image is outdated, your materials are scattered, you’ve merged with another company, your internal teams are off center or you are not attracting the necessary talent to meet customer demand, it may be time to rebrand.

Interested in learning more about rebranding and brand development process? Our proprietary brand development approach—Brand+People™ —believes your people are the key differentiator in a marketplace full of identical competitors. We focus on brand alignment through employee engagement, customer experience and brand perception to create authentic human connections for business growth and success. As a seamless extension of your marketing and sales team, we blend branding, inbound marketing and creative design (professional web design, brochure design, logo design, infographics, package design and advertising) to maximize your business goals. Contact us today to learn more.

Apr 07

Can Your Website Do These 5 Things?

By Joshua Claflin Web Design

Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes most marketers and business owners make is that they overlook their website’s true potential. We know that a website is a necessity to do business. We know how our site should function and what kind of information it needs to contain. But a lot of times we don’t quite grasp the importance of how—that with a few changes—our company’s website could be modified to work harder for our businesses.

Below are 5 things you didn’t know your website could do. More than a pretty face —your website has much more potential than you think.

1. Make you look bigger than you are
If you’re a smaller business looking to attract big clients, your website is the first step. In today’s digital world, impression and trust is everything. A website can communicate your brand’s unique message and connect with your prospect. Microsoft Research reports that people spend only 10 seconds on your homepage before leaving if they don’t immediately connect with your marketing messages. With the aid of professional website design and targeted and clear messaging, you can present your company as a reliable, professional partner that keeps your visitors on your website longer.

2. Generate revenue 
Through methods like blogging, social media, CTA’s (call-to-actions), premium offers and landing pages you can essentially create a completely new revenue channel to grow your business. This process, termed “inbound marketing” is a method that attracts, converts, closes and delights customers to grow your business online. This methodology is proven in the digital age and can significantly affect your bottom line. Consider these following statistics:

According to Social Media B2B, B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those that don’t.
The Content Marketing Institute reports that 8 out of 10 people identify themselves as blog readers, and 23% of all time spent online is spent on social media sites.
ContentPlus published that blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links.
Search Engine Land shares that up to 80% of people ignore Google-sponsored ads.
HubSpot’s research shows that 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.

These trends show that one way to grow or market your business more effectively is by utilizing an inbound methodology as a way to increase traffic, leads and convert visitors to customers. When these mechanisms are in place, and given time to work— your website turns into a 24/7 lead generator.

3. Build your brand
With the right content marketing tactics, you also can build your brand locally and nationally quicker than traditional advertising and marketing methods. Unless you have 20 million for a national ad campaign to spend, inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional marketing. 54% more leads are generated by inbound than outbound or traditional advertising and marketing methods. If you are able to generate relevant content that solves your customer problems—and do that consistently, your brand will begin to take root in the minds of your customers.

4. Attract talent
90% of all online applicants will visit a company’s careers page. Data suggests that just because you have a strong corporate brand, doesn’t necessarily mean it translates into a strong employer brand. Websites that have a video that showcases their company’s values and culture will receive more applicants than a company who doesn’t. (SOURCE: LinkedIn Employer Handbook. December 1, 2012) With a strong careers page, your chances of attracting top-tier talent increases.
 

5. Connect your brand to your customer
Having a professional website design created with your customer or buyer persona in mind can allow you to connect your brand to your customer more effectively than traditional push marketing can. By utilizing your website as the cornerstone in your social media activities you can drive traffic from social networking sites like Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Pinterest that connects your brand to your customers that creates real affinity and preference.

In conclusion, your website may not be able to cure world hunger or create peace in the middle east, but it can make you look bigger than you are, generate revenue, build your brand, attract talent and connect your brand to your customer. By adopting an inbound marketing methodology, you can turn your website into revenue generating machine and a valuable and effective marketing tool.

If you need help or have questions on how to make your website work harder for you, please contact us.

Apr 03

How Much Does A Website Cost?

By Joshua Claflin Web Design

I started my first HTML page back in college in 1997 before the internet was ‘thee internet.’ Since then, I’ve architected and built sites for start-ups to public-traded companies with hundreds of thousands of users and yet even in 2014 the question of cost is a tricky one.

Here’s why…

Today, I think it’s a fair assumption that most people view websites as a commodity. Due to recent hard economic conditions—that seems to be letting up—small business owners and start-ups can’t afford to spend big money on a website which they see as just ‘a website’. With the bad economy brought the emergence of crowdsourcing and discount website building companies. Websites now have a terrific low barrier of entry—with little differentiation in how they function which has brought the perception of their value down.

Savvy companies and brands know that their website is an invaluable marketing and sales tool that allows them to achieve their sales and marketing goals. It supports their marketing and sales efforts and provides assurance to their customers and employees in the form of innate trust. Through social media, content, video and imagery, modern companies understand that the look and feel of a website is just the first step in a broader strategy.

Below I’ve compiled 4 things to help you understand how and why a website is priced and what separates the free websites or discounted website builders from a true marketing tool that transforms your business.

1. Start with your goals
When we start with a new client the first thing we ask is: “What are your goals?” Is your goal just to have a great looking site with great pictures and products and photography or do you really want it to be more than a pretty face? Today, having a website is just the first step. That free website you started and launched a few months ago isn’t enough to build a business or a steady stream of revenue in today’s digital landscape. Businesses must adhere to a specific set of standards, rules and best practices if they hope to ever be found online according to Google’s recent algorithm changes. If you can’t get found, then what’s the point of having a website? Sure, you can have it on your business card and point your customers/clients to it, but in today’s competitive environment is that enough?

If your goals are to increase traffic, there are ways to do that through blogging, social media and search engine optimization. If you want to generate leads, there is a process that creates offers your visitors can’t resist; offers so good that they will gladly trade their contact information for your offer that allows you to continue the conversation. If your goal is customer acquisition, there are methods through things like workflows and lead nurturing that can be utilized to move a potential buyer further down the sales funnel to the close stage. All of this begins with your goals. Design and functionality should be built around your goals and not a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solution.

Bottom line:

Research
Traffic generation 
Lead generation 
Customer acquisition
Search engine optimization
Content creation
Social media management
ROI analysis and reporting
COST = $500 – $15,000/mo. (depending on how fast you want to achieve your goals)

2. Build a solid foundation
Once your goals are set and we know what kind of website you want to build we start with building a strong foundation. There are numerous platforms and applications out there to build a website. You can even start with a blank html page and start building one from scratch. Each are different and come with a set of standard features and functions. Names like Drupal, WordPress, Joomla and Expression Engine come to mind. We use an open source platform called WordPress. WordPress comes with a basic content management system and thousands of free plugins that function like apps on your iPhone. Plugins add extra functionality to a WordPress site like spam blockers, newsletter signup forms, contact forms, maps, buttons, sliders, Facebook feeds and more. It’s also one of the easiest platforms out there for our clients to use—which is why we use it—and it’s for a great price (FREE!). Hosting is also quite cheap to come by. We host with Rackspace Cloud that provides our clients with a cost–effective hosting solution backed by Rackspace’s fanatical support guarantee.

Bottom line:

WordPress: FREE
Hosting: $4.99 – $14.99/mo.
Domain: $9.99
Premium domains: $50+
COST =$4.99 – $100

3. Design, integrate and optimize to get found
You can go out and by a theme for WordPress for around $40. However just plugging in a theme assures your website will look like a thousand other websites out there. We offer two cost-effective options that take a theme as a base design and modify or “skin it”. “Skinning”  means taking a native theme design and customizing it to your brand’s unique look and feel. This way the theme takes on a completely different look while customized to your specifications. If you were to build a website from scratch, or through a base code program like Bootstrap the costs would top into the tens of thousands. Fortunately today, small businesses have the option to start with a theme and modify it to match their desired look and feel for a reasonable price.

Additional design costs begin to incur in the form of content. Content can be anything from written text, custom graphics, buttons, background patterns and more. All these add to the time and effort the team must put into the project. You may need diagrams, a video, or downloadable collateral to help customers understand complex products or services. All of this will need to be taken into account.

Then comes photography. No one EVER wants to invest in photography—which is a shame. You basically have the choice of buying quality images or low-quality images. High-end stock photo sites like Getty and Corbis start at $250+ each. Mid-grade sites like Veer and Jupiter start around $50+; and low-quality sites like Shutterstock and iStock prices start at $5+. However the quality shows. Cheap images don’t add visual value to your website and they look cheesy. Most visitors will pick up on this and leave and forget your site ever existed. Photography is always a huge line item in any web project. So be prepared to invest to make your site look polished.

At the end of a professional webdesign design process you also will need to optimize the site for your keywords. Search engine optimization consists of having relevant title tags, descriptions, image alt tags, on-page links and inbound links all based on the keywords someone would punch in to find you. Google accounts for almost 90% of all search traffic so everything is typically geared toward their requirements.

Bottom line:

Theme = $40
Customizing (Skinning) = $1,500-$2,000
Custom graphics = $800-$1,200
Photography = $500
Good photography = $1,000
Search engine optimization = $400
Content creation (provided by web company): $1,500-$2,000
COST = $40 – $10,000

4. Have a back-up plan
After the site is launched the site isn’t over. Websites should not be viewed as a “one and done”. Now you have to factor in the possibility of any malicious attacks, customer service problems, billing errors etc. that add to the costs of maintaining the site. Most sites can go for years without any major issues, but you will need to keep someone on hand who can address any required updates and any other issues if they arise. The old saying: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong —is true. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had clients going into a meeting and their website goes down.

Bottom line:

COST = $0-$1,000/yr.

To wrap up, pricing a professional website is a very difficult thing to do. As a small business you are trying to cut costs and do things right. You have to start with your goals and work backwards on what you have to spend. Only by setting goals that are SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely can you accurately quantify ROI and what a realistic investment is.

Mar 16

7 Steps To Better Content Marketing And Blogging

By Joshua Claflin Inbound Marketing

If you’re going to spend the time writing a blog you might as well learn how to do it correctly because it takes a little practice. There is a lot of meaningless content floating around out there on the internet from people who don’t know how to blog correctly.

In this article, I’ll give you 7 steps on how to write a blog post that engages your readers, optimizes your web site, solves your customers problems and establishes your brand’s credibility and trust.

1. Pick a topic that solves your buyer personas’ problem
Every blog post worth its mustard must be written for someone specifically in mind. To write a blog post that whimsically moves from thought to thought will confuse your reader and in most cases cause them to ‘bounce’ off your website. By identifying who your buyer persona is first, it will help you to keep your thoughts focused and targeted. You can’t help anyone when you try to help everyone.

2. Create content that is relevant and remarkable
According to Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, “every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003. That’s something like five exabytes of data, he says.” (Source: TechCrunch) That’s a lot of content. Content can take the form of anything that is written, tweeted, recorded, snapped or placed on the internet for someone to read or view. When you set out to create content in the form of a blog, try to do your best to create something that is remarkable, relevant and that solves your customers problems. This will make sure your efforts and time isn’t thrown on the pile of content fodder.

3. Outline with keywords in mind
Once you have figured out who you are writing for, organize your thoughts into an outline. Start with a catchy headline and introduction. The headline should include the keywords you are targeting and pertain to what the article is about. Sprinkle your keywords throughout your article—but only if it makes sense. Do not write for search engines, write for your customers.

4. Organize with bullet points and sub-heads
As you move through your outline, create short, succinct sub-headlines that provide information that tells your persona what the information is about. People tend to scan articles quickly, stopping at sections that interest them. Make sure your sub-heads are specific to the information or problem you are solving. Another tip is to use bullet points to divide your information into chunks that can be consumed quickly. Give them what they need to make a decision quickly.

5. Use images
We live in a highly visual society. And like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words rings true in the wild world of blogging. Use visuals in the form of images, infographics or diagrams that tell the story quickly. A strong visual helps to make the article ‘sticky’ by keeping them on your site longer. It is suggested that Google now counts visitor length or ‘dwell time’ as a metric in determining the authority and rank of your website. (Source: Backlinko). Articles with images get 94% more views. (Source)

6. Cite your facts and stats
If you’re giving advice or recommendations, source your information from credible sources to back up your claim. This will add an extra layer of trust and establish authority in your writing. Human beings love little stats and bits of factual data. Always try to include a simple amount of these little factoids to engage your readers further.

7. End strong
Just as its important to write a good introduction, its equally important to end with a good conclusion. Re-itereate the points you made, why the information given will help solve their problem and a call-to-action (CTA) on what you’d like them to do next. This can be contact for more information, download a whitepaper, visit this page etc.

In conclusion, a good blog post starts with sharing remarkable content that solves a problem and is geared towards your buyer persona. Format your blog starting with a catchy headline with a targeted keyword, a good introduction that tells the reader what they will learn, organized and succinct sub-heads, good visuals, cited sources and a strong ending. By following these tips you’ll be on your way to becoming a strong writer and a blogging pro.

Feb 24

How To Build Your Employer Brand

By Joshua Claflin Employer Branding

I entered Rush and joined a fraternity at the University of Wyoming in 1993. The fraternity I joined was known by everyone as the ‘best’ on campus. They had a reputation for winning consistently year-after-year in intramural sports, having the highest GPA, the most varsity athletes and throwing the best parties. Their reputation attracted almost every able-bodied freshman and not to mention every good-looking sorority girl.

Because of our strong reputation and sense of purpose to be the ‘best ‘— we were able to attract and recruit the best candidates every semester that added to our numbers and bank account. It is commonly known in the Greek world that Rush is the lifeblood of the fraternity. Without a consistent flow of the ‘right’ members, fraternities dry up and are forced to shut down.

Business owners like fraternities — must always be conscience of what kind of members/employees they are attracting, recruiting and retaining. By letting one bad person/ hire in, you risk the reputation and effectiveness of your organization. We live in a world were now one single bad customer experience will be shouted from the rooftops through the 1.1 billion Facebook users or 645 million Twitter users. By having a sound employer branding and talent acquisition strategy, you can avoid a lot of potential bad customer mishaps.

Here are three things you can do now to build a strong employer brand:

1. Create a reputation of excellence

Our fraternity won almost every intramural football, baseball and basketball game every semester for 4 straight years. Our reputation was widely known on campus and naturally attracted the best guys. To attract the best employees, you must also create a reputation of excellence in the marketplace and communities you serve. Product and service aside — this can only be done by hiring the ‘right’ people. Start by looking at your brand and what purpose you serve outside of just making a profit. If your brand were a person, what would it be like? Model your employees after the brand you want to personify. Develop employee personas and the marketing mechanisms like a good careers page to increase your chances of attracting the ideal candidate. Create a culture that allows your ideal employees to thrive. You must also communicate an image of excellence and back it up with your actions. In today’s digital world, 90% of all potential prospects will visit your website or social media network(s) before deciding to apply for an open position. If you do not have a solid website impression then you may be loosing out on attracting the ‘right’ candidate(s). The goal is to have the right person, in the right place at the right time. The natural result will be engagement, team synergy and innovation.

2. Keep the ‘wrong’ people out and let the ‘right’ people in

Trouble began once our house started letting every one in. The ‘wrong people’ forced the ‘right people’ out. We began to suffer academically, athletically and our parties began to suck. The sorority gals began to hang out at other houses and our morale and reputation began to sink.

It is crucial in your interviewing process to properly assess each and every candidate. You need to have an employer brand strategy in place that allows you to filter the wrong people out and let the right people in. By building a strong employer brand strategy and aligning it with your recruitment processes – your business in time will reap the benefits. It will make your workplace a great place to be and your employees — through good management and leadership processes — will give you their best efforts.

3. Nurture excellence and innovation

Our fraternity was successful all those years because our guys had a sense of purpose to be the ‘best’ and the resources and the talent to do really cool things. For example, we always beat out other fraternities in the coveted homecoming float contest because we had more talent: engineers, architects, pre-med and creative majors. Our members would work tirelessly (without pay – I might add) for weeks to build and design the best homecoming float that equaled the Parade of Roses. When you have talented and engaged employees, everything falls in line and you as a business owner have the ability to take your business to new heights. Most owners spend too much time and attention on balance sheets and how to increase the bottom line. This is important, but the one thing they overlook that can truly impact those things is a sound approach to attracting and hiring the ‘right’ people. Once the ‘right’ people are in place, culture grows organically within the confines of a clear corporate and employer brand strategy.

If you’ve ever been in a fraternity, this simple example can be applied to your approach on how to best attract, hire and retain the right people for your business. In B2C/customer-facing companies i.e.: banking, credit unions, hospitals, retail, restaurants, service industry, etc., your people are the key differentiator in a marketplace full of identical competitors. Without a strong brand and talent acquisition strategy, you risk the same disorders as my fraternity did.

Earlier this year, the fraternity closed because it failed to keep the ‘wrong’ people out. This story cuts close for a majority of companies today struggling to build great workplace environments, maintain innovation, satisfy customers and attract the ‘right’ talent. A “brand+people” approach will allow organizations today to build a strong corporate and employer brand that reduces turnover costs, attracts talent, fosters a culture of innovation and engages employees. Contact us for a free 30 minute consultation if you’d like to learn how we can help you maximize your organization’s brand and people.

Feb 05

9 Secrets You Didn’t Know About Graphic Design

By Joshua Claflin Graphic Design

You know what graphic design is…kinda, but we bet you didn’t know these 9 secrets on how important of a role that designer or design agency plays in your ability to grow your business and maximize your marketing…

1. Graphic design is about adding value.
Graphic design is the process of visual communication that combines ideas, imagery and text to convey information to an audience to invoke an action and add value.

2. Design is part of your everyday life.
From the food you eat to the t-shirt on your back – design plays a major role in helping you decide what best fulfills your needs, wants and lifestyle choices.

3. Design attracts customers.
Graphic design is a necessity in business because it serves as one of the most important communication vehicles to deliver your brand, product or service to your customers – the other being verbal.

4. Design gives you the power of visual persuasion.
Graphic design allows you to persuade, announce, sell, invite, demonstrate and inform visually via a website design, package design, logo design, poster design, business cards or brochures. Graphic design legitimizes your offering as a professional organization and aids in the building of your brand for long-term profitability and success.

5. CTA’s are dependent on design.
Graphic design provides the credibility and trust factor for the all to important ‘call-to-action’. Examples include: like, follow, buy now, on sale, call today, register, learn more, available here, vote for me, visit www… or add to cart. These phrases are the basis for inbound marketing and profitability online. Without the proper design standards, conventions and methods implemented by an experienced designer or agency, you hang your online objectives on the precipice of mediocrity or failure.

6. You are not a designer.
Today, anyone with a computer can type out a business card, design an advertisement or build a website. You – yourself, may have probably used some fluorescent paper and a blue marker to draw out a garage sale sign. But it takes the talent, experience, training and knowledge of a professional designer to truly achieve what design is intended to do — add value that initiates an action.

I believe design’s greatest virtue is that it adds value in the form of credibility and trust. These two factors, combined with the creativity and resources of a professional designer or agency along with an integrated marketing plan (PR, advertisement, promotions, etc.) are the foundations of causing any buyer initially in the sales cycle to consider your product or service seriously for purchase.

7. Sometimes, creativity is not a good thing.
Creativity is measured in the capacity and talent of a designer to take shape, color, form, style, imagery and type and transcend those design elements into original, progressive ideas that give the viewer or audience something they have never seen before. Creativity also can influence the purchase decision by causing the viewer to feel enjoyment or satisfaction when encountering a piece of communication. In design, creativity is often restrained to ensure accuracy in communicating with the desired target audience. It can also be repressed by the product or service owner’s idea of how best to present itself. These dynamics determine the level of “punch” of any creative execution.

8. Graphic design is about problem-solving.
One of the best ways to solve a problem in business or product development is through the design process. A good designer relies not only on the dominant right side of their brain for creativity, but also the left side to distill and simplify complex communication problems, visual explanations, methods, applications, diagrams and architectures to solve problems to help others understand what you’re trying to communicate.

9. Graphic design is a very important tool in today’s business world to grab attention.
From an early age we have learned through seeing pictures, symbols and reading words. Graphic design is the way organizations teach their customers about their products and services which makes business grow. As our society and culture steps deeper into the digital milieu of social media, texting, smartphones and content overload, it will be designs’ job to cut through the clutter and grab the worlds attention in new ways.

In conclusion, next time when you (CEO, CMO or business owner) think graphic design is just pretty words and pictures, take a step back and appreciate the skill, talent and genius of the people who solve your communication problems, make your brand, business or success look good.

Feb 01

5 Best Practices for Responsive Website Design

By Joshua Claflin Responsive Web Design, Web Design

If I had to guess, I would estimate that over half of all U.S. businesses have yet to change their website to a responsive web design format (viewable on smart phone, tablet and desktop).

What most brands don’t know is that 50% of mobile phone users, use mobile as their primary internet source. This statistic will only continue to grow in the years to come. If your business has not made the move to a responsive website design format yet, here are a few best practices and things to keep in mind when you do.

What is Responsive Design?

Responsive means that it fits on three screens: mobile, tablet and desktop. Responsive web design is accomplished by CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). CSS is what developers use to design a webpage. From a marketer’s perspective it’s like a branding guide for your website. It tells the browser how to interpret the HTML that contains the CSS. Why does this matter? It means that if creating a mobile-specific website or app is out of budget — you can still deliver a great experience through responsive design.

Here are a few key statistics you should know:

91% of all people on earth have a mobile phone
56% of people own a smart phone
80% of time on mobile is spent inside apps
72% of tablet owners purchase online from their tablets each week
50% of mobile phone users, use mobile as their primary Internet source

1. Start with Your Brand

Before any coding takes place — start with your brand. As more and more competition enters the marketplace (domestic and global) it seems darn near impossible to stand out. Having clear brand differentiation in the marketplace will be one of the main ways to attract customers, close leads and delight customers. When people hit your website, the first impression must reflect your brand’s persona, message and promise to the customer. Your brand must answer these four questions: Who are you? Who needs to know? How will they find you? Why should they care? Read more about brand development here.

2. Create Buyer Personas

Once you have your brand tuned up — begin by creating an architecture based on who your ideal customers are. Get really granular on who they are and write your content for them specifically based on these key points:

How does my product or service solve my customer’s problems?
What can I do to add value to their visit?
How does my brand align with their personalities and expectations?
What is the tone and voice I must take to communicate clearly to them?

By basing your content on your buyer persona your content will keep them engaged and add value. Wrap this content around a clear and intuitive navigation to help them find the information quickly. The old rule in website design: “Don’t make me think.” still rings true today.

3. Content Strategy and Perception

Your brand must provide a credible and authentic impression to your visitors. Today, people want more visuals and less text on the home page and secondary pages. Communicate your offering simply and effectively. With 60% of the sales cycle over before a visitor even contacts your sales person — your website must engage your visitors and make the sale for you. According to Google’s Zero Moment of Truth study, consumers consult an average of 10.4 pieces of content prior to making purchase decision. Make your content count.

4. Optimizing for Search Engines

To be indexed by Google, Yahoo! and Bing — use the following criteria to create your page structure:

Accurate keyword titles and descriptions
Use the Google Trends tool or MOZ to target the right keywords.
Fast loading pages
Optimize your images and use CSS to speed your site’s visual elements. Your website must load less than 2 seconds or people will abandon your site.
A flow of fresh and relevant content via blog
77% of all Internet users read blogs. By blogging on a regular basis you will receive 55% more website visitors. By creating interesting content, you increase your chances of getting back links from other credible websites which passes on “link juice” to your site, increasing your rankings. You also will have your content tweeted, shared or liked.
Low bounce rates
If you’ve done the above 3 points, you should see lower bounce rates. 50% or less is excellent, 60-70% is typical, 70-80% is poor, 80%+ is very bad. When Google sees sites with high bounce rates, it typically means the site loads slow, is a spam site or the keywords are not representative to what the site is about.
Social proof
If you haven’t embraced Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ now is the time. Consider the following shocking statistics:

4.2 billion people use their mobile device to access social media sites
The population of the United States is 313M
- There are 245M internet users in the United States
- 56% of Americans have a profile on a social networking site
- 166M or 52.9% of all internet users are on Facebook
- 47% say Facebook has the greatest impact on purchase behavior
- 54% of Facebook members have used the social network via a phone
- 22% of Americans use social networking sites several times per day
- Facebook is the most addicting of the social networks
- 76% of Twitter users now post status updates

By adding social proof to your site you humanize your brand and allow your users to share its content far and wide.

5. Design for Responsiveness

Now that you have some directions on how to go about planning your responsive website design here are a few things to keep in mind when design and coding time comes.

The screen size is the diagonal measurement of the physical screen in inches, while the resolution is the number of pixels on the screen. The resolution is displayed as width by height (i.e., 1024×768). Also, while desktop and laptop displays are in landscape (wider than tall), many mobile devices can be rotated to show websites in both landscape and portrait (taller than wide) orientations. This means that designers and developers, in some cases, must design for these differences. Make sure to design each view to see the differences in each and adjust accordingly:

Your website accomplishes responsiveness by scaling the images and text by percentages of the screen instead of fixed widths
Create 10px margins on each side so that the design doesn’t look crowded
Images should fill the whole screen and scroll evenly down the screen
Remove any non-essential content
Watch for breakpoints. As the site scales, make sure the screen adjusts at the right resolution to keep the design and layout in tact
Allow compression of your scripts and CSS to make the site load faster on mobile devices that are often on a 3G or low-speed connections
Create an Apple touch icon (129 x 129) so people can save to their home screen
Most people prefer landscape (59.8%) over portrait (41.2%) (Source: Apple Insider)

Google announced starting April 21st, 2015—your website’s mobile-friendliness will now be a ranking factor. (Source: SEMPOST) This means if your website is not responsive and mobile friendly, you will loose out on potential ranking factors. Find out if your website is mobile-friendly.

Desktops & laptops 1024×768 and higher
iPhone 5: 1136×640 4S: 640×960 3GS: 320×480
iPad First & second generations: 1024×768
Third generation: 2048×1536
iPad mini 1024×768

Android phones & tablets
Most phones are 320px wide or 360px wide, and most tablets are 800px wide. When designing for them, however, it is typical for developers to break them into the following groups based on their Density-independent pixel (dp), which is the minimum screen size.

Small screens: 426dp x 320dp
Normal screens: 470dp x 320dp
Large screens: 640dp x 480dp
Extra-large screens: 960dp x 720dp

In conclusion, by making your site responsive, you now have the ability to tap into mobile traffic that you otherwise were missing out on. As companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft continue to innovate new devices — businesses will need to keep up to speed on the latest trends to ensure they are maximizing their online potential.

Jan 30

4 Questions Every Brand Must Answer

By Joshua Claflin Brand Development

“The brand is your product”, said Lee Clow, Chief Creative Officer at TBWA/Worldwide, responsible for Apples’ 1984 commercial. When you think about it, what he said was absolutely true.

In today’s cluttered marketplace and economy, consumers demand an experience from the brands they buy. They also want brands that appeal and align to their lifestyle, character and personalities. The old cliché, “you are what you eat”, now also applies to “you are what you buy“. If you consider for a moment the brands you buy, you would be able to compile a list of things that make you – you. Here’s mine:

I drive a Jeep – Jeep stands for freedom/adventure
I work on an Apple – I think different
I drink Coors Light – I grew up in The Rockies
I root for the Broncos – I’m from Denver

If you were to write out a list of the brands and things you like, would someone be able to get an idea of who you are – I bet they would…

This same kind of thinking applies to brands. Below are four questions every brand must be able to answer to be recognizable, memorable, favored, distinctive, preferred and ultimately adored.

1. Who are you?

How would you describe your self? How would your company describe itself if it were a person? The inability to answer this question in a short succinct sentence that people can easily remember diminishes your brand’s potential and ultimately its profitability.

2. Who needs to know?

If your brand were a person, who would they hang out with? These are your customers. How would your brand talk? What would it wear? In today’s digital, disconnected world where people would rather shoot an email than pick up the phone, brands need to be authentic, understandable, personable and reachable.

3. How will they find you?

Where would your brand go? To the mountains? To a football game or Nordstrom? These places is where your brand needs to be. What sites are they hanging out on? Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest? Make it a point to be there also.

4. Why should they care?

How do you make someone care? Typically, caring involves being friends or having the same interest as another in some altruistic endeavor.

For friendship to happen, you must initiate a conversation or some act of kindness to kindle a conversation. After the conversation you figure out if you have anything in common, then you can move on to the next step.

For shared interests like sustainability, health, conservation etc., you have to come to that interest with the same ideals and values which also sparks a friendship.

Same for brands. Be a brand that is authentic and that exhibits trust and shares a purpose with your customers. Be personable and real. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. For a long time, companies have been driven by their profits, prestige and who has the biggest building as their main focus and have not put the customer center. Customers want to be center! Make a great product that helps us survive, look good or feel good, save us money—or all four. Back it up with a promise and some great looking/feeling branding, provide great customer/client service and you’ll have customers/clients coming back again and again. It’s that simple and that difficult.

Ultimately, in the end as Clow said — the brand is the product. It’s about standing for something – anything other than the status quo, providing an experience for the brand to carry out a real world function that encourages its customers to aspire to do more.

To learn more about how to create a real, authentic and trustworthy brand that your customers will love, contact us for a free brand consultation.

Jan 25

How to Implement Inbound Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]

By Joshua Claflin Inbound Marketing

Now that you understand the differences of what inbound marketing versus outbound marketing is and have seen how inbound marketing works, now it’s time to learn how to implement this methodology into your own marketing program.

Below, I’ve included an infographic on How to Implement Inbound Marketing and divided it into 9 steps. To read more about each step, click here to skip to the bottom that describes each step in more detail.

Click here to enlarge graphic

If you would like to discuss and learn how you implement inbound marketing, please contact us today for a free 30-minute marketing assessment and consultation.

Step 1: Analysis of your current brand and marketing

To begin, you need to evaluate your brand. Is it aligned? Brand alignment is described as this: Does the brand mean the same to your employees, your customers and to yourself? Do you have a unique story and message that allows you to stand out amongst your competitors? To maximize your inbound marketing efforts it will be critical to have a well-defined and differentiated brand position. A comprehensive brand development process will give you what you need to apply your brands voice, message and unique value proposition.

You will also need to look at your current marketing efforts. What is working what is not? Can you augment any current outbound methods that are working well with the new inbound program?

Lastly, you’ll need to install Hubspot™. HubSpot software includes all the tools you need to do inbound marketing, plus award winning services and support to help companies conduct successful inbound marketing campaigns.

Step 2: Competitor analysis

After your brand and marketing has been evaluated and tweaked accordingly you should then take a look at your competitors. The competitor analysis tool in Hubspot will allow you take a peek under the hood on their efforts. You can also utilize a tool like MOZ to garner strategic insight into what’s happening online. This will also give you insight into figuring out their current online strategies. Use this information to find the “whitespace” and create targeted brand messaging.

Step 3: Goal setting and key performance indicators

Next up is to take an honest look at organization and set some goals. Look to set goals using the SMART method: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timebound that meets the C-Suites demands and then go for the “BHAG” (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). Inbound has the potential to blow your doors off if you’re not ready to deliver on your customer demands. Be prepared for the ‘what-ifs’ like; what if your close rate of qualified leads increased by 20%? How does this affect your company’s ability to scale? Are you ready? Be ready… As Mike Tyson said, “everybody has a plan till they get punched in the face.” Here are a few example goals:

Increase web traffic by 5% in 3 months
Increase qualified leads by 5% every month after month 4
Convert 6% of leads to customers

Wrap it up with listing your biggest obstacles to obtaining these goals and some specific ways to overcome them.

Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should incorporate what you’ve learned in the competitive analysis step. Hubspot will track leads, traffic, conversion rates, lead history and other key metrics for your reporting needs. Cross reference these benchmarks with your sales metrics and other brand reporting tools you may be using to give you a clear baseline.

Step 4: Create buyer personas

Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal prospect that assist in the strategy and execution of a more targeted marketing campaign. Although fictional, they are based on real data, behaviors, and demographics learned through customer interviews and polls. (Source: Hubspot)

Who exactly are your customers? Do you know them as well as you should? I once read an article that said the “CMO is dead” and that it should be renamed as “CCO” – Chief Customer Officer. As marketers, it’s our responsibility to know our customers better than anyone else in the company. Begin by thinking how you will add value to the people you are targeting. Start by finding out everything you can about them. Here are a few examples:

How is their job measured?
What skills are required to do their job?
Who do they report to? Who reports to them?
What publications or blogs do they read?
What are their biggest challenges?
How do they receive their information? LinkedIn, Blogs, News?
How do they prefer to communicate?

After you’ve interviewed them, create a dossier of them and keep it up on your wall. Begin to create all your content around solving their problems with remarkable, educational content.

Step 5: Setup website

You will need to get your website setup to conform to inbound standards by making the necessary adjustments. You will need the following:

Blog
Social signals
Hubspot tracking script
Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest
Forms
Landing page and email templates
CTAs

Hubspot has all the resources necessary to help you integrate these elements, but a good design agency can also customize and set these up as well.

Step 6: Create the content calendar and compile a strategy

Now that your brand is aligned, you’ve set some goals, you got some benchmarks in place— now it’s time to put together a strategy based on the inbound methodology (ATTRACT > CONVERT > CLOSE > DELIGHT) to market and grow your business through inbound marketing. This will be the game plan that you will use to guide you over the next 12 months. Summarize all the main points into a strategy outlining the key points of your plan. They should include how you plan to attract, convert, what happens when they convert, how you plan to delight them and then how you close them. Each phase should include specific content that moves them to the next step.

Get out a calendar and determine the time you have to devote to content creation every week and stick to it. Begin by listing a wide range of topics specifically tailored to your buyer personas. Put together dates as to when you want these topics to be posted. Try to create a back log of content as time permits.

Step 7: Content creation, landing pages and social media

Coming up with something to blog about can sometimes be difficult. Hubspot offers a great tool to help you generate some ideas. Content you publish should be in the form of blogs, infographics, whitepaper and eBooks, webinars, videos and social media posts and links from other sources besides your own. Create value for your prospects and become a resource to them. Blog posts should have social signals so users can easily tweet, like or share your posts as well as a way to sign up to receive updates to your blog.

Once you have created a few whitepapers, ebooks it’s time to start creating some landing pages. The landing pages will feed prospect data into Hubpsot so you can easily track their click patterns on your site. This allows you to give a better customer experience by understanding what they are interested in.

Use Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn to push your content far and wide.

Step 8: Lead nurturing

I can tell you from first hand experience that once you start blogging regularly you will start to see an increase in traffic. At about the 6 month mark traffic suddenly begin to shoot up as your content approaches a “critical mass.” At this point you should be moving customers along the marketing lifecycle and nurturing your prospects through the sales funnel by offering them specific content that solves their problems. Content should be highly personalized and manicured at this phase to be relevant. At this point, they will be asking for case studies and product pricing. Be prepared to offer this information to close the deal.

Step 9: Monitor and adjust

At this point you should have a significant, steady flow of traffic to test in real-time and be looking to make any adjustments or tweaks to make your landing pages, CTAs and content perform better. You can make big differences by A/B testing, trying out different subject lines, titles, colors and even buttons.

In conclusion, this is a brief snapshot of what is involved in implementing an inbound marketing campaign. There are several other components we did not get into like email, analytics, workflows and forms and ways to use social media.

If you would like to discuss and learn how you implement inbound marketing, please contact us today for a free 30-minute marketing assessment and consultation.

Joshua Claflin

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How to Implement Inbound Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]

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