Branding & Marketing

Maintaining Sustainability in Marketing and Branding

Posted by Chris Brown on May 9th, 2008 in Branding, Call to Action, Marketing, marketing plan, tactics

Green Sea Turtles
Originally uploaded by davidagalvan

The word “sustainability” has become a strong new buzzword the last year or so. I’m seeing it in the green movement, business models and even in executing a marketing plan.

After creating a marketing plan — (you know a little strategy about who you want to attract, what you want to communicate, what action you want them to take and then all the little action steps of the tactics) — sustaining the efforts can sometimes feel like more than you bargained for.

Finishing the new webpage, writing the next press release, updating the prospect database, finding the right trade show — all these steps take time, but mostly take perseverance.

Figure out a way to help yourself and your staff take those steps to make marketing part of your everyday routines. Sustainability is sticking with it for the long haul, even when you get distracted, don’t feel like, aren’t sure if it’s the right course or just feel discouraged.

To establish your brand and keep your branding in top of mind with your potential audience, you’ve got to continue to execute. We live in a world where yesterday’s news is seems so much older now… now with instant Twitter communication, AIM, and Texting, sometimes even email seems like old news.

In order not to burn out, remember the turtle and the rabbit (okay, an updated version of the tortoise and the hare) it’s not the fastest, it’s the most consistent routines that will win the race.

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Creating Your Mission Statement: Personal? Professional?

Posted by Chris Brown on May 7th, 2008 in Taglines, strategy

Graphic courtesy the Outstanding Club’s website Outstanding Club - Ordinary People. Outstanding Actions

Have you ever tried to write an “About Us” page for your website? Really worked on your “elevator speech” or “30-second commercial”? How about a mission statement for your business, your church group, a volunteer group or even yourself?

If you have, you know that crafting a “personal mission statement” is much harder than it seems because you have to do soul searching and then you have to boil it all down.

Years ago when I was an undergraduate at Kent State, I took what I thought was going to be a “cake walk class” called Values for Survival. Filled with students from diverse backgrounds, it actually helped me to reflect at an early age about what’s important to me and what I wanted to do with my life. Although it was pass / fail as I recall, the class was anything but easy. Introspective. Thought provoking. Authentic. It sparked more than one interesting conversation.

For those who struggle with defining and categorizing their marketing efforts — you know who you are! — you are probably familiar with the difficulty of focus. Focus means eliminating things. Focus on a market. Focus on a service. Focus on communicating the key benefit your product provides. Boiling it all down to the essence.

Somehow a personal mission statement is even more challenging because it’s about you, not the external professional, more tangible things. Not the products you sell, not the service you provide and not the business you work for.

Recently at SOBCon, Lorelle Fossen challenged the group to describe their purpose of their website in 10 words or less. Easier said than done! Many came up with tag lines, not the mission statement.

This is a follow up to the challenge issued by Iain Hemp at Outstanding Club to create a personal mission statement. Recently I entered his group writing project contest and expected that there would be thousands of entries (the two winning prizes: $25 Amazon giftcard) but instead, there were only three. Mine and two others! Why? I think because crafting a personal mission statement is harder than it seems.

My votes for the winners go to the two other personal mission statements: Jake Dahn’s Personal Mission Statement published at jakedahn.com by Jake Dahn is one of inspiration: I would like to encourage creative thinking and push peers to be creative, to further inspire us all.

Rob Jenson’s Personal Mission Statement published at jensenrf.wordpress.com by Rob Jensen is one of mentoring: Working with people to create trusting relationship to understand their needs and help discover and apply the right tools to help them be successful on their own goals.

I think because of that Values for Survival class many years ago, I got a headstart on this project, so it’s not fair for me to count my statement. It is hard to judge someone’s personal mission statement, isn’t it?

Funny thing. My personal mission statement in the class was boiled down to two statements: 1) Find a better way and 2) Make a difference. So I guess my more current statement of “Learn. Evolve. Share.” still fits me all these years later.

So, I’ve decided to extend this “personal mission statement” challenge, but make it easier. I’m adding a marketing overlay. What is the mission of your product, your service or business? Can you boil it down to your “professional mission statement?

Try it. What was your experience?

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Thoughts from CopyBlogger Brian Clark at SOBCon ‘08

Posted by Chris Brown on May 6th, 2008 in Blogging, Branding Blogs, Marketing, Marketing Blogs, strategy

One speaker whose thoughts really stood out to me at SOBCon ‘08 Masterminds & Models Saturday session was Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com. Some of my notes:

“People ignore advertising, but look for content.”
“The word blog will fade into the background”
I don’t consider myself “a journalist, I’m an entrepreneur and marketer”
It’s about the right product/service, to the right audience with the right price offer.
No one will link to offer sites. Use your blog to create the authority site as the hub and build the niche of content that will attract the audience.
Carve a tight niche out of a huge audience. His example: blogging and internet marketing has a huge audience. He has carved out copywriting from that audience. With a following of over 35,000 readers, he’s really developed it!
Use your static pages for creating an offer. Use your live blog space for creating authority.
Don’t sell banner ads on your site, banner ads don’t convert, but just gives the advertiser branding — make people pay to be in your sidebar.

I have to agree that I think content is what makes subscribing and coming back to a site worthwhile.

What do you think about his thoughts on the word “blog”? I find myself referring to blogs as an online newsletter to folks who don’t read or write blogs. Last year at SOBCon ‘07 David Armano suggested that we NOT call ourselves bloggers so that our mindset focused more on the topic and less on the medium.

What do you think? Do you think the word “blog” is going to fade from use?

Flickr photo courtesy of Wendy Piersall from the SOBCon ‘08 Photo Pool

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Writing tips for Marketing and Branding - from SOBCon

Posted by Chris Brown on May 4th, 2008 in Blogging, Branding Blogs, Marketing, Marketing Blogs

I was at SOBCon ‘08 in Chicago this weekend and have met some amazing people!

Decided I couldn’t avoid Twitter anymore. I’m at http://twitter.com/cmcbrown

The session Saturday was so packed full of ideas that inspired me and lightbulb moments that my brain was numb by the close of the session.

Here are highlights from Chris Garrett from Chrisg.com

Chris Garrett is also the co author of the book ProBlogger Secrets for Blogging your Way to a Six-Figure Income with Darren Rowse. The book was one of the free handouts at the event. Chris gave us some awesome practical ideas for working your writing:

“Content is the hardest, don’t lose your ideas.”
Mind mapping is a great way to expand your ideas. Circle your subject. Branch out with first sub themes that occur to you. Add subthemes to those.
Keep a blogging notebook - he suggests a moleskin. Especially great for commuting. Jot down ideas wherever you are or you’ll lose the idea
“A really good question is better than a really good statement!” If you say everything there is to be said, no one will have anything to add to the conversation.
Revisit topics over and over again, don’t be afraid to repeat yourself but add a new perspective. Revisit your old posts and look at it from a slightly different way.
He had great visuals which I’ll add when I get back home (writing from the hotel right now) but he forgot to brand his slides with his logo, URL and phone number.
Liked his Rubber Ducking principle if you have to write quickly: Hold the rubber duck in your hand and say: I want to write a post about ___________ and this is important because 1_______, 2________ and 3________. Of course the duck doesn’t answer, but now you write what you told the duck.
He inspired the 5 minute post writing
Suggests using a monthly calendar especially if your work with others
Some of his great resources: mind manager. Scribefire. Skitch -screen capture for MAC. Blog bridge - download your feeds for offline reading. Skype recorder is a great way to do podcasts or just record your interviews to capture everything in a meeting when you’re trying to interview and take notes at the same time. Use Firefox for quick searches of a site. He suggests that we check out Crowdstatus.com too.
Great quote at the end of his presentation: “Simplicity is the achievement of Maximum effect with Minimum means.” Dr. Koichi Kawana

Chris Garrett - thanks for making the trip from the UK to Chicago to deliver a 20 minute presentation. Your presentation was one that so many of us will put into action right away. What am I leaving out??!

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