Archive for the ‘marketing’ Category

Opportunities in a Challenging Environment
The economy, unemployment and overall consumer and corporate confidence have clearly been damaging to the nonprofit industry. A new study by Giving USA Foundation shows that charitable giving fell last year by the largest percentage in five decades.

While individuals and institutions gave nearly $308 billion in pledges during 2008 – a healthy commitment by any standard – it nonetheless represents a decline of over $6 billion from 2007, or 5.7% on an inflation adjusted basis. While the real decline started in the Fall of 2008, this year isn’t shaping up to be much better. What can a nonprofit do to begin turning this around?

The Importance of Branding
Some nonprofits have understood the importance of branding their organizations, but most give it only “lip service” while continuing to put pressure on their fundraisers to produce even more. Now, an important new study from Cone, LLC and Intangible Business quantifies the leverage that a stronger brand could provide.

The study ranks the top 100 U.S. nonprofit brands among organizations providing social, environmental and animal related services. Historically, while many surveys have analyzed the financial side of nonprofits and many have looked at image and awareness data, this new study puts both sets of information together and presents a Power Brand Rank. Comparing a brand’s “revenue rank” with its “image rank” points to a number of marketing implications:

• A high “revenue rank” coupled with a low “image rank” suggests the potential financial growth if the image rankings were strengthened;
• Similarly, leveraging a strong brand image asset should lead to incremental financial rewards.

The question then becomes, what’s the best approach for a nonprofit to take to build brand awareness and image. (It should be noted that while this study did not include universities, civic or cultural institutions, there is no reason to believe the conclusions regarding the importance of branding would differ for these organizations.)

Nonprofit Anniversary Marketing
The anniversary of your nonprofit’s founding is an ideal opportunity to galvanize your employees, board members, donors, foundations, government and corporate sponsors, and to re-kindle their commitment to the relevance, importance and needs of the organization.

This is a unique opportunity, with the potential for a yearlong marketing program that, done properly, sets the stage for your fundraisers, strengthens your longer term brand image and improves the organization’s ROI.

For-profit organizations, both large and small, have long recognized the importance of company anniversary marketing because it isn’t just the latest advertising, public relations, direct mail, internet or event program. Rather, it is a unique chance for an organization to link the strength of its past to its plans for the future. For nonprofit organizations this story can be especially important among new members, volunteers and donors.

And, importantly, anniversaries do not need to be celebrated in multiples of 25 years. Your 33rd can be as powerful as your 75th.

Planning for an anniversary marketing program should begin well in advance of the anniversary year. As you begin to develop your strategic plans and budgets, you also should audit your resources and perhaps conduct research to determine what your stakeholders really think. This research also can provide a benchmark against which to measure your progress and ROI at the conclusion of your program.

A theme and logo are essential. You should also consider a historical book, or CD, newsletters, direct mail, multiple events and the internet to communicate your story. Advertising and public relations may also play a part. All of these tactics require coordination and integration with your overall strategy, mission and vision statements.

Further, you should consider hiring an outside consulting group. Not only will they bring “fresh eyes” to your situation, but they will have the experience and ability to coordinate all of the facets of your program, something that your staff or volunteers may not have the time or expertise to do.

Today’s marketplace is uncertain, distrustful and, frankly, afraid of the future. When you celebrate your historical success, and position yourself for a vibrant future, you reassure people about your staying power and relevance. Ironically, the current environment couldn’t present a stronger marketing opportunity.

GUEST BLOGGER

Gary Kullberg has served on five nonprofit Executive Boards, two as President and one as Vice Chair. He is the CEO of the Kullberg Consulting Group (KCG), founded in 1994, a strategic alliance of sixty entrepreneurially driven marketing and marketing communications companies whose service, http://www.MarketingMilestone.com, provides both effective strategy and execution to organizations and brands celebrating their milestones. KCG brings together the combined experiences of its members, who have worked with over 585 organizations, profit and nonprofit, in 21 major industry groups.

Author: Gary Kullberg
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Multi-cooker

Image by mark_am_kramer via Flickr

So, you tell me:  Can a person have their Facebook account disabled for promoting and marketing their brands, products and services?

SCENARIO 1.

Just the other day, as the anchor for Social Media Television, I had the distinct pleasure interviewing a guest who described what he did to have his Facebook account disabled (unknowingly).  He’d created a business page, but because of SEC rules, and his profession, he had to take it down.  So, he began engaging his community and “promoting” his products and services on his personal profile.  To his horror, one day, Facebook sent him a nice little note that said:  ”Your account has been disabled”!

SCENARIO 2.

Today, I received an exciting note, that a community member had reached 5,000 “friends” on his personal profile and Facebook said, in other words, “time to get a Fan Page” (i.e. Business Page).  He was shocked at the limitation.   Here’s my reply, and I’m curious what you would add to this:

Dear X,

First, Congratulations on reaching this milestone with the equity of your brand!

Can I respond / weigh in?  Just a few thoughts, which I know you “already know” …

You make sense, but think about it:

If your personal profile has nothing to do with your business or profession, then a Business Page (i.e. Fan Page) is the most appropriate.

What I’ve observed is that we start building a personal brand/and or our services or products, and sometimes, we’re promoting them on the personal profile (and thus a violation of the terms of service) and that really isn’t the purpose of FB personal profile.  It’s intended to be, well, personal.

You can determine what you’re promoting by looking at your profile picture.  If it’s a logo, or image and NOT your personal picture, then, you may be tight-walking the “promotion” violation, and risk having your account disabled by Facebook.

If you aren’t doing anything to build your business or brand, and you reach 5,000 “friends”, then I say, you really need to have a “celebrity” page on the the Business side (you know you have a choice when you create your page to be a local business, product/service,  “celebrity”, or public figure, etc.).

At any rate, the content that you publish on your Fan Page will push through to your wall, so your entire community will have visibility.

Just my two cents, unsolicited, but given out of sincerity.

Have a great evening and congratulations again on your “stardom” success!!

Tiffany Odutoye, Social Brand Equity Coach

SCENARIO 3.

My client was sharing their progress to date and had great engagement on their business page.  However, they shared with me the personal profile, which was:

1) In a business name

Violation:  Your personal page must be a “real” first and last name.  A business entity should have a presence on the Business Pages.

2) Highlighting ONLY a business in the “info box” and promoting their products and services

Violation:  Well, this is walking that tightrope again.  I cannot be dogmatic.  However, here is where people come to learn about “you”, not necessarily your business.  If you want to have your business in the URL section, great, but lets stop promoting what we do, and focus more on “who” we are.

We reviewed the Facebook terms of service, they decided to make some changes.

What about you?  What do you think?  Is this approach too strong? Should Facebook ease up and “allow” personal profiles to be whatever we want?  Should they force you to have a business page?  Should they open the limits to the number of “friends” you can have on your personal profile? Since they’ve reached 400M+ users and would not be able to manage enforcement, should we take a chance and promote, promote, promote?

Pick an area and let’s hear from you!

This morning is day three of  Start-Up Weekend 2010 and I’m uber excited that my idea for a new tech company got selected.  We’ve been locked in a room since Friday, with necessary breaks for food, sleep, etc.  Today, we’ve got to brand our project.  In searching through the corners of my mind for a compelling brand, I took a quick look on the web and found the article below that I wanted to share:  Why Weird Words Make Great Brand Names, by Phillip Davis.

In the interim, we’ll do a brainstorming activity today and hopefully leave the room with a great name!

Here’s that article I mentioned:

When creating a truly great company name, the number one consideration should be the level of “engagement.”

“Engagement?” you ask incredulously.

Yes… engagement.
While there are all sorts of naming strategies… metaphors, acronyms, coined/invented, key attributes, positive connotations, etc., the one common denominator that separates the mediocre from the memorable, is the degree to which the name engages the mind of the consumer. Most new business owners opt for company names that inform and describe, leaving nothing to the imagination. They often fail to realize that the context surrounding the name (the ad, the store sign, the proposal, the brochure copy, etc.) will define what they do, so the name can be free to describe how they do it. In other words, no customer will hear or see the name in a mental vacuum. Yet this is the way we often judge names when “brainstorming”. And it’s why focus groups are such

notoriously bad judges of good names. It’s not the people that are flawed, it’s the process itself. Most of the feedback takes the form of free associations, all in an effort to determine if a name is “good” or “bad.” It goes something like this…

Interviewer: “What do you think of the name Monster?”

Respondent: “Ew! They’re scary and dangerous!”

Interviewer: “What about Amazon?”
Respondent: “Jungle… drowning… snakes… piranhas…”

Interviewer: “Apple?”
Respondent: “A bad apple spoils the whole bunch.”

Interviewer: “Caterpillar?”
Respondent: “Squishy, soft, and squirmy.”

Interviewer to new business owner: “I think we can safely assume these would be bad brand names…”

So if it’s not a matter of free associations, then what determines a good name? Again, it’s that all important element known as “engagement.” Engagement is what causes you to lean forward, ask twice, invite more information and pursue the conversation. A good name should invite a discussion, start a conversation and “engage” the other person’s interest and attention. That’s why Amazon, even though it says nothing about what it does, works better than Books-A-Million. Amazon is open and inviting and Books-A-Million is literal and descriptive. Amazon speaks to the process…flowing, easy, abundant. Books-A-Million speaks to the products… books. And while Amazon leaves room for the company to grow in any number of directions, Books-A-Million leaves the company in a bind. I once heard an ad for a company called Just Brakes. Since they had outgrown this narrow niche, they adopted a new tag line… “We’re more than just brakes.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Several years ago some marketing consultants got smart and realized that CFO’s and other finance centric professionals live in a world that is focused on ROI (Return on Investment) and want to run spreadsheets that show the outcomes of dollars spent before committing to the expenditures. Since the money people make many decisions, these consultants and other “gurus” created programs that spoke the language of the finance department and created “ROI” algorithms to sell their services to these decision makers.

By speaking their language they were able to appear more intelligent (key word: appear) and win the business. Left-brainers everywhere rejoiced, as now these disciplines were under their control.

For too long marketing, business development, networking, direct mail, advertising, branding, PR (and more recently social media) were viewed by the left brain professionals as “the Black Arts”. They admitted that these were necessary, but since they were more creative and not always predictable, that they were some how less important to the success of a company than the more predictable departments on the org chart.

However, while this trend toward analyzing “return on investment” on everything makes people feel good — it has paralyzed many companies.

During a job interview years ago I told a CFO that sometimes to find success in marketing you have to try a variety of tactics. I used the old saying “throw some spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks!” The CFO responded that if a marketing campaign could not prove out results in advance, then his company would not do it. “No spaghetti could hit the floor!” The company hired a “ROI” oriented marketing manager (they did not hire me) and the company had minimal success in growing its image. The person they hired lasted 14 months on the job before the company changed direction, yet again.

While you do not want to waste dollars in promoting the image of your company, if you think there is a magic formula that will guarantee success, you will spend your life over thinking every opportunity and you will miss out on the allusive successes you seek. There is a difference between throwing money around and having an instinctive feeling on how to have an impact on your company’s positioning in the marketplace.

Instead of spending hours looking at the return on every investment on a spreadsheet, you should redefine the definition of ROI in regards to marketing.

ROI = Rely On Instincts.

Raising the visibility and brand of your company is not as easy as building a new website, joining Twitter, or sponsoring an industry conference. You need to fine tune your instincts or hire someone who knows the landscape of how all the “black arts” actually work together.

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When I planned my first event we did NOT even have the internet! I remember that word processing was done on terminals, and the screen was black and the letters were gold. Now, we have flashy word processing that can be done without software via open source platforms like OpenOffice (Sun Microsystems) and cloud computing (Google Docs).

Perhaps you have been in the events industry just as long.

We were just beginning to use fax machines with the roll paper. Only senior executives had cc mail…and mobile phones – OH FORGET IT!

How many of you remember those days? Telling you that – I feel like a dinosaur, but really I’m the Gen X-er. Isn’t it true that as experienced planners we may be of one generation, but we work with and serve quite another?

Take a look, for example, at the tools we now have – my how things have changed.

* Smart phones

* Flipcams

* The NET and it’s blogs and social networks

We now have laptops and all kinds of editing software to makes forms, and capture leads right at the time of sale!

It is precisely this shift in technology that necessitates a change in the thought process of today’s meeting and events professional. Attendees are consistently exposed to technology and will expect an “experience” when they attend events. Here are some tips from experienced strategists: Nate Riggs of Social Business Strategies, Will Burrus of 247Interactive, and Eric Leslie of Be On Scene:

Skyline Exhibits Panel Tips

Here is some of the chatter from the event last week!  Go to live feed.

I’m going to just review what I believe is the future of the web and that’s mobile technology.

Spread the word about your hot new product or company!

Word-of-mouth marketing is the most powerful and persuasive weapon you can use, and it wont cost you anything! Based on George Silvermans years of consulting with successful word-of-mouth campaigns of his own clients, here is one of the first resources on how to harness the often underestimated power of word-of-mouth, and be heard above
the media noise.

1. Word-of-mouth is actually the center of the marketing universe.
2. Just as it is untrue that the sun revolves around the earth, marketing does not really revolve around advertising, selling, and promotions. Much of marketing actually centers around illusion-creation.
3. Word-of-mouth offers an authenticity to it because the source is normally independent of the company, he or she is offering his or her own candid opinion and therefore, the marketing appears credible.
4. Advertising is the renting of a medium to send out a carefully crafted message to a specific audience. Everything is paid for, whereas word-of-mouth is a more effective tool; and best of all, it is absolutely free.
5. Word-of-mouth can take on a life of its own. There are no limits to how far-reaching it can be. Just study how fast a good joke on the e-mail circulates.
6. Studies have shown that a satisfied customer will tell an average of three people about a product or service she likes, and eleven people about a product or service with which she had a negative experience.
7. Because this is the age of the Internet, e-mail, websites, chat rooms, and video teleconferencing, word-of-mouth is even more important to businesses today than ever before.
8. The most important way by which sales can increase is by increasing the speed with which decisions are made. Decision speed is the time it takes for your customer to go from initial awareness to enthusiastic use and recommendation of your product or service. Simplicity, ease, and fun govern the decision process.
9. Marketing success is determined more by the time it takes for your customer to decide on your product than by any other single factor. Decision speed is more powerful than positioning, image, value, customer satisfaction, guarantees, or even product superiority.
10. Shortening the customers decision cycle means your products benefits, claims, and promises must be obvious and compelling; information must be clear, balanced, and credible; comparisons must reveal meaningful differences, your trials should be free and easy, your evaluations, clear and simple. Guarantees should be ironclad and generous. Testimonials and other word-of-mouth marketing must be relevant and believable. Delivery, training, and support offered must be superior.
11. A good way to spread the word on your company is to circulate true, positive stories about it. FedEx is famous for its legendary employee who hired a chopper just to deliver a package forgotten on the tarmac. People love a good story, and that is the essence of word of mouth.
12. There are 9 levels of word-of-mouth. They range from the public scandal of minus 4, the product boycott of minus 3, to the raving customers/advocates who tell you how great your product or service is (plus 3) to the talk of the town level (plus 4).
13. Examples of those who have reached plus 4 level of word-of-mouth marketing are:
14. Lexus Automobiles, Saturn Car Company, Harley-Davidson, Netscape Navigator, Celestial seasonings herbal tea, The Internet, and Apple Computer.
15. Some ways of harnessing word of mouth are by using experts like customers, suppliers, salespeople, experts roundtable discussions and selling groups. Take advantage of seminars, workshops, and speaking engagements, dinner meetings, teleconferenced panel discussions, and trade shows. Canned Word of Mouth consists of putting out videotapes, audiotapes, using a well-designed website, or distributing CDs. There are also ways such as referral selling programs, testimonials, and networking methods, hotlines (1-800 numbers) and e-mail.
16. Using traditional media for Word of Mouth means using customer service as a word-of-mouth engine, public relations, placements, unusual events, promotions, word of mouth in ads, sales brochures, or direct mail, salesperson programs, sales stars, peer training, or using salespeople as word-of-mouth generators, word-of-mouth incentive programs (Tell-a-friend programs), useful gifts to customers (articles, how-to manuals) that they can give their friends.
17. Employees should be actively spreading word of mouth about your products. Spread stories around about examples of superior customer service. Give people a common mission and make rewards dependent on the accomplishment of that mission.
18. Word of mouth accelerates the process of customer decision-making, from deciding to decide, asking for information, weighing options, evaluating a free trial, and then finally becoming a customer and advocate.
19. With customer-oriented service, your company can increase sales via word of mouth.

Specific steps in creating a word of mouth campaign:

1. Find some way to get the product into the hands of key influencers.
2. Provide a channel for the influencers to talk and get all fired up about your product.
3. Gather testimonials and endorsements, like actual letters of praise.
4. Form an ongoing group that meets once a year in a resort but once a month by teleconference or daily by list group
5. Create fun events to bring users together and invite non-users. Saturn, Harley-Davidson, and Lexus have been successful with this approach.
6. Produce cassettes, videotapes, and clips on your Web site featuring enthusiastic customers talking with other enthusiastic customers. Custom-create some CDs for each potential customer.
7. Conduct seminars and workshops
8. Create a club with membership benefits
9. Pass out flyers. Tell friends. Offer special incentives and discounts for friends who tell their friends.
10. Use the Internet!
11. Do at least one outrageous thing to generate word of mouth.
12. Empower employees to go the extra mile.
13. Network and brainstorm for ideas
14. Run special sales
15. Script! Tell people exactly what to say in their word of mouth communication.

By: Regine P. Azurin and Yvette Pantilla href=”http://www.bizsum.com
“A Lot Of Great Books….Too Little Time To Read”
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Regine Azurin is the President of a company that provides business book summaries of the latest bestsellers for busy executives and entrepreneurs.

Author: Regine P. Azurin
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

**UPDATED***

Who doesn’t need good press?

Imagine seeing your name in the local business newspaper and magazine, being highlighted in a local publication or TV show, your family, friends, clients and potential clients gathering calling to congratulate you on your press coverage.

If building your credibility through local public relations is appealing to you, you will want to join us as Meredith Liepelt of Rich Life Marketing shows us the exact steps she takes to secure local press coverage for herself and her clients. And how you can too!

Join us as Meredith teaches us how to get local PR on a micro budget!

You will learn:
• The #1 thing that makes up the news
• Four kinds of stories that reporters love
• The simple components of a press release
• How to know where to send your press release
• The one thing you should never say to a reporter when you call to follow up
• How to get your name in the paper next week – really!
• The key components of your press kit

Join the LIVE Smart-Savvy Entrepreneur’s BlogTalk Radio show ***UPDATED****on May 7th, at 5:00 p.m. EST: http://bit.ly/C7kR5 (or get the replay of the show on-demand).

Questions will be taken LIVE during the show at: (347) 308-8941

Host: Tiffany Odutoye | Guest: Meredith Liepelt

About the featured guest:
Meredith Liepelt, Creative Client Attraction™ Strategist and President of Rich Life Marketing, is an award-winning marketing entrepreneur, coach, speaker and author of eight years. She has been featured on entrepreneur.com, MSN.com, Portfolio.com, ABC, NBC, Business First, The Columbus Dispatch, as well as a multitude of newspapers and radio shows around the country. Meredith is a featured columnist in Glow Magazine, www.ResourceNation.com and has been published in many others outlets.

Meredith is featured in the books Real You Incorporated, 8 Essentials for Women Entrepreneurs, by Kaira Rouda and Beating the Bailout Blues by Rosalind Resnick. She is a member of The National Association of Women Business Owners and eWomenNetwork where she leads the marketing committee for the Columbus, Ohio chapter. She is the author of an upcoming book on client attraction strategies for solopreneurs.

Meredith works with solopreneurs and micropreneurs around the country through her group and private coaching programs, boot camps, teleseminars, retreats and home study kits. Meredith created a 2-minute movie called www.TheRichLifeMovie.com that other women business owners have called “brilliant” and “a true gift to women in business.”

She publishes a very popular free bi-weekly enewsletter called Smart Marketing that is packed with client attraction advice, tools and resources. Every new subscriber receives a free e-course where she teaches her Marketing for a Truly Rich Life Formula™ valued at $139.

In case you missed it, I’ve compiled relevant news topics related to social media from last week. http://tinyurl.com/socialmedianews010409

Call to action:
Want to increase your market share?
* Find an article on this list that resonates with you and comment on the blog, share your viewpoint or expertise.
* Also, comment here or reference us in a backlink, on the articles that were the most compelling for you.

Enjoy!

sociamedia_newsinreview_wkending010409

Web 2.0 Expo is a global annual gathering of technical, design, marketing, and business professionals who are building the next generation web. Web 2.0 Expo features the most innovative and successful Internet industry figures and companies providing attendees with examples of business models, development paradigms, and design strategies to enable mainstream businesses and new arrivals to the Web 2.0 world to take advantage of this new generation of services and opportunities. Web 2.0 Expo is co-produced by O’Reilly Media and TechWeb.

Here is a clip form the keynote (Oct. 2008).
2009 is planned for March 31-April 3 (San Francisco, CA)

Everyone is frenzied about Social Media and how to use the tools for business purposes.

Wondering if Facebook is a good tool to help you connect and grow your business? I developed this presentation to give an overview of the importance of Social Media, how to *enter* the room and strategies to get up and going.

There is no audio here, but the *live* course presented:

*7 ways to create a dynamic FB presence
*Optimizing your profile
*Hands on use of FB
*Best Practices

There are two parts: 101 (for beginners) and 102 (intermediate).

To register, visit http://tinyurl.com/virtualpartnerevents