Photo Courtesy of aussiegall 

The Geek Squad

The Geek Squad used to be a super-cool brand that changed the computer repair industry. Now, the Geek Squad is no longer a brand, it’s a booth at Best Buy. Where did the brand go wrong? When founder Robert Stephens sold Geek Squad to Best Buy in 2002 it was no longer an independent company with it’s own mission and brand promise. Best Buy viewed Geek Squad as a revenue source, not as a brand with a mission.

Just look at this interview Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens did for Fast Company magazine in June of 1999. In it Stephens describes Geek Squad:

This is my attempt at glamorizing the unglamorous.

The Geek Squad is comprised of the top minds in computers. We solve problems that other people can’t.

Stephens goes on to describe his team of Geeks as free agents and soldiers:

Our business is based on rapid response and adaptability. None of the people who work for me are certified by Microsoft or Apple, but they’re kind of like Marines.

Sounds like a pretty cool company, doesn’t it? That brand brand doesn’t exist any more.

Where did the brand go wrong? The Geek Squad lost its entrepreneurial spirit and abandoned it’s brand promise. It’s no longer the same company it was founded to be. If you build a business on a particular promise, keep that promise. When you sacrifice your promise and your mission, you sacrifice your business.

IHOP Express

Formerly known as International House of Pancakes, IHOP has been serving breakfast since 1958. But with flat revenues, IHOP began searching for new ideas to make more money. Late last year they launched that new idea with a old name: IHOP Express, a hip, unconventional restaurant aimed at millenials who prefer breakfast on-the-go. At IHOP you can get Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity pancakes. At IHOP Express you can get a “Cup O’ Pancakes.” Different concepts, different menus, different customers…same name.

Where did the brand go wrong? It’s called the Line Extension Trap. As explained in the classic marketing book Positioning: Taking the name of an established product and using it on a new one. IHOP Express is a new business, not a scaled down version of a real IHOP. To call two different businesses the same name is to cause brand confusion. Line extension also undercuts each brand’s position. IHOP should have called IHOP Express a different name.

Fat Ho Burgers

Fat Ho Burgers (yes, it was is a real business) took Waco, Texas by storm when it opened in March 2011. A dose of novelty, a dose of controversy, and soon people were lined out the front door waiting to order a “Supa Fly Ho” with cheese. Television stations lined up to do stories, and Fat Ho Burgers even gained national attention. Less than one year later the business is closed.

Where did the brand go wrong? It relied on a gimmick. It was a one-trick pony that depended on a clever name and the PR that followed it. But gimmicks do not make a good business. There is an old saying in the industry, “Good marketing cannot save a bad business.” Nor can a gimmick. Avoid gimmicks as a foundation of branding your business.

The common theme in all three of these brands is that they aren’t true brands, they are business ideas created to make money.

With these brands gone wrong, we know what not to do. But what to do instead? Let me give you a little nudge in the right direction with this free, recorded webinar: Branding U: Revive, Refresh, Revitalize Your Brand

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Overall, cable viewership is greater than broadcast viewership. That’s a little misleading in that no individual cable show comes close to the top rated broadcast show in total viewers. TNT’s The Closer gets less than half the viewers of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars. That doesn’t mean you should choose broadcast TV advertising over cable. Let’s see if we can help you make some sense of cable.

Why Use Cable Advertising?

Choosing between cable or broadcast TV advertising is a matter of choosing between reach and frequency. Reach is the total number of different people reached by a campaign, frequency is the number of times an individual is reached by your message. When choosing between the two, frequency should almost always be your choice.

See my article here: The Case for Frequency

Use cable for frequency, broadcast for reach. If you have the budget to do both, it’s a good 1-2 combination punch. If you don’t, cable is the answer for a smaller budget.

Cable Advertising Effectiveness

Cable is not an immediacy medium. It won’t knock your door down. Really, there is no advertising medium capable of knocking your door down. The medium itself, be it cable, broadcast TV, or Google Adwords is simply a method of access.  Don’t use cable, or any form of advertising, like it was a drug: take a hit, get a high. Do some advertising, get some customers.

Cable’s power is in building a brand relationship and building interest in your business. Cable viewers are loyal to their favorite cable programs. This gives you the opportunity to share your brand story over time and build a connection with potential customers.

Cable Advertising Schedules

You can buy the “packages,” which will be cheaper and give you (mostly) greater reach. But remember, frequency is more important than reach. You can achieve greater frequency by having a fixed schedule. That means you chose the channels, the times and the programs in which you run. You run in those channels, times and programs repeatedly so that people will come in contact with your message repeatedly.

To achieve greater frequency, the key word is “narrow.” Narrow your channels, narrow your time frame, narrow your programs. The narrower your schedule, the greater your frequency.

Your Advertising Message

What’s more important than both frequency and reach? Your advertising message. Let me be clear: the most important factor in determining success of any advertising campaign is your message.

What makes a good cable advertising message? A local cable rep recently gave me these qualities of a good message:

1. Having a local face.
2. Showing your location.
3. Showing and demonstrating your products.

Those are the technical aspects of a good commercial, but they don’t really make your commercial an effective message. Effective messages give people a reason to pay attention to your brand or to take action with your business.

It is whimsical to think that you can magically make someone want to do business with you just because they watched one of your commercials. Remember this: People have established purchase habits, they have a family of brands with which they are comfortable doing business. If they are not doing business with you, your objective is to become part of that family of brands. That means having a relationship, and that means not being a pushy salesperson all the time.

Effective advertising messages do a couple of things: They cause customers to start thinking about your business, and they cause people to consider altering your purchase habits. Use cable’s power of frequency to tell your brand story over time, forming a relationship with potential customer and causing them to consider a purchase from you.

Do you have more questions about cable advertising? Please post them in the comment section below, or email me at Jay<at>TheMarketingSpot.com.

You may also be interested in my free recorded advertising webinar:
Straddling the Fence: Choosing the right combination of traditional and online advertising.

Don’t miss out on free marketing advice. For updates on new articles: Receive The Marketing Spot by Email or subscribe in a blog reader.

When starting the branding process with a new client, we always start with the mission. The mission is the one thing on which all other things in the business are based, and that includes marketing.

Yes, we know. Business has largely blown up the mission and bastardized it into a mostly useless mission statement. Mission statements are primarily crafted to put on airs while offending no one, thus inspiring no one either. You will often see it inaccurately described as a representation of a purpose. That’s inadequate. A true mission is an animal of a different breed: it is a destination. It is real estate.

What is a mission?

Keith McFarland defines a mission in his excellent book Bounce:

“a highly specific, clearly stated, and widely embraced goal that carries with it a strong sense of the imperative.”

McFarland further explains a mission this way:

“Tell me what hill you’re going to take and how you’re going to take it, then you’ll know you have a mission.”

Know what hill you are going to take.

This is where missions start going awry and it’s where brands go off course. Entrepreneurs want to conquer the world and so we have trouble starting with one hill. Service is not a hill, it’s a continent. To be the best in service is to be too broad. To potential customers it sounds like “I want to be king of the world.”

Have a mission to conquer something specific. The more specific your mission the more vivid and inspiring it is to customers and to your team.

How Does it Affect Your Brand?

Specificity is also important in building your brand. Brands are about something specific because customers can get their minds around something definitive. They have a hard time grasping abstractions like this big company mission: “To create value and make a difference.” What does that mean?

Instead, try this hill on for size: “You don’t have to wait to see your doctor.” from a local medical clinic. There’s no doubt about the mission for this clinic: Reduce wait times. See your doctor now. It is a brand the people can wrap their mind around.

When you have a specific mission to take an individual hill, you can build a distinct brand. Specificity in mission gives your brand more meaning and a stronger connection with potential customers. That’s why branding starts with the mission.

Building a Good Mission to Take a Specific Hill

What’s your mission? McFarland lists four areas to help you articulate it for your business.

1. Identify the market you want to serve.
2. Determine the precise customers you will go after.
3. Specify the needs you will fulfill.
4. State your unique value proposition.

With those four answers in hand, what hill do you want to take? Answer that question and you have a mission. You also have the makings of a powerful brand.

You might also be interested in my free branding eBook:
The Brand-Building Checklist

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Click here to view the embedded video.

The Rules of Marketing

A new year does not mean the rules of marketing have changed drastically. Yes, marketing evolves and you must move forward, keeping an eye on the future. But marketing fundamentals are fundamental. No matter what new technology or trend appears in 2012, one thing will not change: The Importance of Branding for your business.

When people ask me, “What can I do to market my business?”  what they are really asking is “What tactic can I use to market my business?” Starting with tactics is starting at the wrong end of the marketing equation. As I illustrate in the video, your best marketing tactics will reveal themselves if you define your brand.

Tactics are the result of a strategy.
Your strategy is dictated by your vision.
Your vision is a future picture of who you are.
Who you are is your brand.

That’s why branding is so important. That’s why your first marketing action of 2012 should be to sharpen and polish your brand.

Resources to sharpen and polish your brand:
What is a Brand?
Free Recorded Branding Webinar: Branding U
Free Branding eBook: The Brand-Building Checklist

Don’t miss out on free marketing advice. For updates on new articles: Receive The Marketing Spot by Email or subscribe in a blog reader.

Where oh where did the time go? Here we are in 2012 with another great year of marketing ahead of us. But before we get too far down the highway, let’s take a look back at the best small business marketing articles of 2011. I’ve organized the list around the four essential spots of small business marketing. Pick a topic and dive in or plough through all 15 articles. It will take you less than 30 minutes, and I guarantee you’ll be a better marketer for it.

Thanks for your support of The Marketing Spot Blog. May you and your business have a blessed and and prosperous 2012!

[Click on the red article title for a link to the article]

Marketing Foundations

Why I Don’t Find a Niche – My Answer, and maybe yours, when someone tells you: “Why don’t you find a niche?” This was my highest ranked blog post of the year using my sophisticated rating system (see explanation below).

The Four Essential Marketing Spots Explained – A 14 minute audio clip explaining the four most important marketing functions of a small business. Early last year I was a guest on Greg Corombo’s Toolkit podcast, where he asked me to explain how the four spots work. This audio clip will explain how all the marketing disciplines work together.

The TED Advanced Video Degree in Entrepreneurship – The 10 best TED videos for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Video lectures include: Product Development, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Psychology, Brand Strategy, HR Management, Behavioral Economics, Marketing Communications, Advertising Concepts, Leadership, Operations Management.

Branding

Branding Process Explained for Small Businesses – 26 minute podcast explaining how branding works and how to brand a small business. Taken from my guest appearance on Mike Klassen’s Magalog Guy podcast.

Billboards and Brand Dilution – How your advertising can weaken your brand and cause you to lose business over time.

Taglines: When the Brand Name Doesn’t Promise – Sometimes your brand name doesn’t do the job in communicating your promise to customers. That’s where taglines come in, they fill in the brand gaps and can be your most important brand communication tool.

Customer Experience

The Potential to Differentiate – This would seem like a branding article, no? But it’s the customer experience that gives a small business the real opportunity to differentiate. This is the article that explains the why and how.

Fundamentals of Business: Customer Choice – Too many choices paralyze customers and prevent purchase decisions. This article tells you how you can reduce customer choice to get more sales.

How do you know if your customer experience is winning customers? – Is the time and money you invest in your customer’s experience working? This article gives you two ways to tell.

Conversation

My Study: When is the Best Time to Post on Facebook – This is by far the most popular article on The Marketing Spot Blog. The findings of my study may surprise you a bit. The article also includes a free down-loadable tool to help you find the best time to post on your Facebook business page.

Facebook Promotions Guidelines Translated for the Small Business Owner – A semi-humorous look at Facebook’s business page promotion guidelines. Does Facebook really even want businesses to have contests on their page? You decide after reading this article.

How to Spend 10 Minutes a Day on Social Media – The number one investment you must make in social media marketing is time. This article shows you how to do it in just 10 minutes a day. Is it really possible? You be the judge.

Promotion

Three Tips to Better Direct Mail – I’m a big fan of direct mail. Here are three ways to make it work better for your business.

Website Analytics and What You Should Measure – Website analytics let us know just how effective our website is at promoting our business. But there’s so much data to sort through. This article will help you start narrowing down the data into something you can use to gauge the effectiveness of your website.

Marketing to Generation X – I wrote a series of articles last year on how to market to the different generations, including Baby Boomers, Millennials, and Generation Z teens. But readers had the most interest in Generation X. This article summarizes the best way to market to Generation X.

How I choose the best

I use a convoluted algorithm available only to those who know the secret Marketing Spot handshake. It is a combination of popularity, engagement, and personal preference.

The Best of Past Years

2010 – The Best of The Marketing Spot

2009 – The Best of The Marketing Spot

2008 – The Best of The Marketing Spot

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My first article for the Washington Post was recently published and it has more on how to create magic moments that spark word of mouth for your business. In the article I explain how to create conversational specifics that create the magic moments, sparking unpaid evangelism by your customers.

You can read the full Washington Post article here:

Link: Creating magic moments for customers

Don’t miss out on free marketing advice. For updates on new articles: Receive The Marketing Spot by Email or subscribe in a blog reader.

The Questions to Ask

Sure, social media marketing saves your business money. It’s free, or practically free, right? Why wouldn’t you want to do social media marketing at that price. But that’s not the question you should be asking. After all, standing on a street corner and yelling at people is free too. Instead, there are two other questions you should asking:

1. Does social media marketing make me money?

If you shut down your Facebook page today, would you have fewer sales next month? Can you attribute a portion of sales to your social media marketing? Social media marketing has a nice price tag, but it also needs to be a source of more business.

2. Is it the best investment of your marketing time?

Could you be getting a greater return somewhere else? It’s the opportunity cost question. You have a limited amount of time, and social media takes time, maybe more so than other forms of marketing. What if you spent your marketing time on other less time-consuming activities, even if they cost a little more?

What Are You From Getting Social Media?

To separate social media from other marketing is a trap. Marketers and businesses often treat social media as if it has its own set of standards that are different from other forms of marketing. As you assess your social media marketing apply the same criteria you would to any other marketing. Here are some things you can, and should be, accomplishing:

Building your Brand – Strengthening that emotional and psychological bond with customers. Causing them to have thoughts, feelings and opinions about your business.

Getting Leads – Your marketing should be a source of potential new customers.

Converting Fans to Paying Customers – People may like your Facebook page, follow you on Twitter, connect with you on LinkedIn, but will they spend money with you?

Creating word of mouth – One of the primary benefits of marketing and advertising is that it creates word-of-mouth conversation about a business. Are people talking about you?

I don’t mean to steer you away from social media marketing, unless you should be steered away. You should try to objectively analyze your marketing and not participate just because it’s free or because everyone else is doing it. Are you wasting time on social media marketing?

You may also want to read:
Study: When is the best time to post on Facebook?
Peter Drucker on Why Social Media Marketing
Is Traditional Media Bad?

Don’t miss out on free marketing advice. For updates on new articles: Receive The Marketing Spot by Email or subscribe in a blog reader.

For many retailers, the holidays are the sink or swim time for their businesses. Put together a winning retail season and they can either go into 2012 with a surplus and a winning attitude or at least have broken even to end a difficult year. Come up with a losing retail season, however, and they can find themselves dreading the New Year.

So, how can businesses, and marketers for that matter, deliver a bundle of joy this holiday season? I’m so glad you asked.

Holiday Marketing Gifts

Stay within your budget – It is important for marketers to put together and keep within a holiday budget just as consumers do when it comes to shopping. Keep in mind that both e-mail marketing and social media marketing are a pair of avenues that do not cost a great deal and typically produce a very large return on investment.

Leverage social media – Although some businesses have failed to completely understand the dynamics and power of social media, you need to leverage all you can out of it. Sites like Facebook and Twitter provide great forums for reaching out to both current and potential customers.

According to a study from Frank Magid Associates, consumers utilize Facebook more than television between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. While many people are at work, home taking care of kids, telecommuting or at college, it is a great time to reach out to them with your marketing efforts, showing them the various bargains out there for them during the holiday season.

Tap into mobile users – With many consumers on the go, it only makes sense that you market to them over their mobile devices. While the emphasis is not on making a purchase right then and there, providing customers and potential customers with product and/or service information, coupons etc. while using their mobile apps can lead them to do business with you and/or your client;

Review the past year – It is important to look back at the previous year and see what worked and did not work with your holiday pitches. Remember that some of the things may not have worked due to timing, the economy, etc. so consider rolling them out again this year if circumstances permit. Also look at what return on investment (ROI) you received with last year’s holiday marketing efforts to determine your goals for this season;

Target key dates – It sounds like a no-brainer, but make sure you promote what should be some of your busiest days of the holiday season. Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving) is pretty much a given, but do you know how many potential shoppers there are on Christmas Eve Day? How many people do you think typically shop the last full weekend before Christmas? What about the turnout the day after Christmas when you can find bargain hunters looking for buys? Memorize the important dates so that nothing slips by you;

Get creative – The holidays are all about fun and excitement, so make sure your marketing efforts prove just that too. Consumers are not only looking for savings during the holidays, but campaigns that catch their eye. Break away from the standard marketing and advertising ploys and push the envelope. Just as in television commercials during the Super Bowl, people may like or dislike the advertisement, but advertisers and marketing professionals want a message that consumers remember. Make your holiday marketing efforts stand out.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday Marketing!

Dave Thomas writes extensively for B2b lead generation online resource Resource Nation that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

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Conventional wisdom is the collective judgment of everyone that has gone before us. It manifests itself in an assortment of generally accepted practices designed to give us a roadmap and prevent us from making mistakes. Unfortunately, it prevents us from doing lots of other things necessary to grow a differentiated business.

Prevents Innovation

To be a distinct business you must be an innovative business. To be innovative, you create better and different products and services. You try new ideas that no one else is trying. Conventional wisdom traps us in traditions and prevents innovation.

Assures Mediocrity

Remarkable businesses are marked by individuality. By definition, conventional wisdom is mediocrity. James Fenimore Cooper, author of The Last of the Mohicans, once wrote:

The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.

Follows the Crowd

Following conventional wisdom means you’ll always be following, never be leading. It may also relegate you to being a below average business because you’ll always be doing things after everyone else as done them. Your business will be reactive, rather than proactive.

Not Always True

Conventional wisdom is not necessarily true. It is often later proven to be wrong. How many times has The Food Pyramid changed over the years? Research has proven wrong conventional wisdom about study habits: Rethinking Study Habits, and that worrying is bad for your health: The Longevity Project. And on and on.

Being Unconventional

That’s not to say that all generally accepted practices are bad or wrong. Paying your taxes on time and following the generally accepted accounting practices is good conventional wisdom. But when it comes to building a remarkable, differentiated business, there is the conventional way of doing things, and then there is your way of doing things. That’s what will make you different.

So how can my friend be unconventional about starting a new church? Maybe he should not use research to determine the vision and mission of the church. After all, that is what all the other churches do. He says he will be in prayer about it.

What about you, how can you be unconventional? What different path can you take to differentiate your business?

Don’t miss out on free marketing advice. For updates on new articles: Receive The Marketing Spot by Email or subscribe in a blog reader.

Don’t miss out on free marketing advice. For updates on new articles: Receive The Marketing Spot by Email or subscribe in a blog reader.

How can you make your Adwords campaign profitable? Anyone with a website can get an Adwords account and instantly start getting traffic. However, whether or not your campaign actually has a healthy ROI is largely dependent on your quality score, which has a strong relationship with the click through rate (CTR) of your ads. The higher your quality score, the more clicks you get, at a lower price, directly affecting your bottom line.

If you are logged into Adwords you may browse your active keyword list and notice a quality score aside each one. You are looking at the quality score that is affected primarily by the CTR of your keyword and its corresponding ad. How can you increase the quality score?

Send Highly Relevant Visitors to Your Landing Pages

You may think that Google sending “sort of relevant” traffic to your ads is better than no traffic, but keep in mind that this “sort of relevant” traffic will result in a low CTR, affecting your quality score for your other Ad Groups and/or campaigns. To see just how important CTR is in determining quality score, check out this study by Search Engine Land.

If you want to get more traffic to your page about “wooden baseball bat reviews”, get traffic from people who are searching for “wooden baseball bat review”, “bat baseball wooden reviews”, and “review wood baseball bat”. You can do this using the modified broad keyword option after you make your ad. For the above example, typing in “+wooden +baseball +bat +reviews” as your keyword would result in relevant traffic. Once you’ve got traffic to your ads, you have to make sure that your traffic finds the ad relevant…

Play Around With Your Ad Copy

If you are getting traffic from people who are searching for “Dallas cosmetic surgery”, make sure that your ad(s) speaks to those who search for the term by including that exact phrase (or something related to it) within your ad copy.

Although your CTR will be determined in large part by how relevant your targeted visitors find your ad, very minor changes in your Adwords Ad copy can mean the difference between a 0.65% CTR and a 1.8% CTR.

Here are some tested tricks that you can implement in your own Adwords campaign:

• Use Action Words: Save 75%, Join Today, Get Your Free Estimate, Limited Time Offer.
  All are words that cause someone to take action.
• Teach Them Something: How to Save Money, How to Get a Date, How to Get a Job. People respond well to information that helps them solve problems.

If applicable to your landing page, use words and phrases such as free, secret, secrets, today, right now, exposed, you need to, YOU, and download. If you use these kinds of words and your landing page does not fulfill your promise, the ROI of your Adwords campaign will suffer because, even if you are getting a lot of clicks with the help of a high quality score, your visitors will be disappointed when they visit your site.

Abandon Some of Your Keywords

You may have the best landing page in the world, an ad which has a high click through rate, but your success also depends on the history of the keyword itself. If Google deems that your keyword is not relevant to your ad and corresponding landing page, it will give you “poor” keyword relevance, meaning that you’ll have a poor quality score no matter what you do.

To fix this problem, compare your ad and webpage to what Google displays in the organic and sponsored search results for the selected keyword. For example, you want to advertise a local dentistry practice by bidding on the keyword “dentist”. That keyword, however, is too broad and you should instead be targeting keywords such as “Boston dentist” or “Boston dentist practice”. Targeting long tail keywords will give you high keyword relevancy an increases your click through rates.

Nickolay Lamm is an internet marketing specialist who protects against the unethical selling practices of invention promotion companies at InventHelp’s Scam Videos.