Every entrepreneur has a personality in real life that makes them a unique individual. But for some reason, business seems to change people. Put those same personality-driven entrepreneurs in a business, and suddenly they become sterile and formal, and the businesses they own devoid of personality. That’s not good because sterile brands are not winning brands.

Comparing Personal Brands and Business Brands

If your friends were to describe you, the individual person, how would they describe you? They would use adjectives, talk about your personality, and describe some of your inherent qualities.

My friend Jordan is really creative. She is so bubbly and fun to be around. And she has such a big heart, always helping people who are having a difficult time.

Why can’t that also be a description of a business? It can, of course, if you allow your personal brand to merge with your business brand. The objective is to let your personality show to build a business that is as unique as the individual who owns it.

The Experience of You

Entrepreneurs tend to think in terms of transactions, exchanging goods and services for money. But personal brands are about the experiences and emotions shared between friends. Customers don’t go shopping for a transaction, they shop to fulfill a need. If they can also get an experience and a relationship when they do business with you, your business becomes personal and unique to them. You are their personal brand.

Think in experiences, not transactions.

Apply Your Personality

You have a powerful, personal brand when a customer describes your business with a personality trait. For example: Thoughtful, Vivacious, Warm-Hearted. But how do you get customers to describe you in that very personal way? You apply your own personality traits to your business.

Make a list of all your personality traits. Or rather, have your friends and family make the list, describing you with adjectives. Then take the list and narrow it down to the top 1-3 on the list. Of course, eliminate the ones like: cranky, sarcastic, and complacent. :)

What’s left might be list like this: Mysterious, Lively, Imaginative. Wouldn’t that be a fun place to spend money? Wouldn’t you like to get to know that business and make it your personal brand? That business could be yours. The trick is to take your best personality traits and turn them into something the customer can experience.

Give your business a personality.

So why are personal brands different from business brands? There’s no good reason.

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photo courtesy of Patrick Hoesly

‘Fluffy puppies’ is a euphemism for nice news, human interest features. Stuff that doesn’t have blood and guts. That’s what the news rooms think you don’t want to see: fluffy puppies. As I was working to get publicity for local children’s book author Missy Balusek for this story on literacy, this is what one local TV newsroom told me:

They (the brass) have told us: ‘No fluffy puppies!’

Meaning, nothing that makes you feel good. And so, news directors sit eagerly by their police scanners waiting for the next criminal arrest, fire, murder or car accident. That’s what they think you would like to see on your television set as you watch the news before you go to bed. “Honey, let’s turn on the TV and see who got killed today.”

The Press Release in File 13

You have been taught that to get news coverage, you must send out a press release that follows a formula. If you do, you have a chance. According to Barbara Rozgonyi at Wired PR Works, to get your press release noticed, and potentially covered,

“It has to inform, educate and provide value to audiences and it has to be relevant.  There’s no better way to raise your relevance factor than by connecting to news and trends with your message.”

That’s part of it, but according to the news directors there has to be something more, and that something is something bad. Am I exaggerating? Maybe a little. But watch your local news tonight. How much of it makes you feel good versus making you feel bad?

Make Your Own Newsroom

Traditional media thinks that people want negativity. You and I know that’s not true. But you don’t own the newsrooms, so you have to take matters into your own hands. Make your own news.

Take your news online. Create your own Facebook page. Create a website with a news and events section. This is what the local author did and the tour was a resounding success.

Then, concentrate your efforts on the traditional channels that do want good news. The local author has received plenty of publicity, like this feature article in the Wacoan magazine. And this guest shot on the local morning TV show: Moms Every Day.

Let the TV news directors and Newspaper Editors bathe in their bad news. Make and spread your own good news. Go where people are smiling, and want to make other people smile.

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What is it? Pinterest is a social network that allows “Pinners” (users) to collect and share things they find interesting. Think of Pinterest as a collection of digital photo and video albums. Users “Pin” (collect) things they find interesting into their personal “Pinboards” (albums) and that content is then sharable with other “Pinners” (Pinterest users), on Facebook, and other social networks.

The first question that pops up is “How do I market my business on Pinterest?” There’s not a short answer to that question, so I offer 20 Pinterest Marketing Actions below. However, if you want to maximize Pinterest to market your business, get the first fundamentals right.

There are two ingredients to the Pinterest recipe:
1. Having something interesting that people want to Pin.
2. An interesting image or video.

Keep in mind: Pinners are not on Pinterest to be marketed to. They are there to collect interesting things and share them with their friends. Be interesting and create sharable content. The power of Pinterest is that you can use it to attract more referral traffic to your website.

A big advantage Pinterest has over Facebook is that your pins are evergreen. Your pinboard does not disappear at the bottom of a timeline, never to be seen again. In the long run, Pinterest can become more valuable to your business than your Facebook page.

So, let’s get on with marketing your business on Pinterest.

The Incomplete Steps of Marketing on Pinterest.

1. To get your site pinned: Focus on sharing visual content. Even if your content is primarily text, include a strong visual on the page or in the post. But don’t just stop with a strong visual, make sure the content is something that people would want to save for future use. Strong visuals include interesting pictures, infographics, data charts, graphs, book covers, pictures of famous people. If you don’t have one yet, get an account at iStock Photo or another stock photo service.

2. Create a Pinterest Account for Your Business. If you have a Twitter account, use the same email address as your Twitter account. Pinterest does not yet offer a connection for Facebook business pages. You will have to get an invite from a friend who currently uses Pinterest, or request one from the Pinterest home page.

3. Add the Pin It button to your browser. This will make it easy for you to add content to your own boards.

4. Add Pinterest social sharing tools to your website, such as Digg Digg for WordPress. Making it easy for website visitors to pin your stuff. Every time someone pins one of your pages or articles, you get a link back to your website. These links are the path to more traffic from that Pinner’s followers. Caution: These are all “no-follow” links, meaning you cannot use Pinterest as an SEO trick. However, your Pinterest profile is indexed by search engines so take care in filling it out and match the information to your other online business profiles.

5. Before you build your Pinterest network, create your own pinboards of interesting stuff. But don’t just fill your pinboards with your own content. You will quickly be identified as a self-promoter. Find and pin other people’s content and mix it with your own.

6. Start following other pinners who you would want to follow you back. Preferably influential Pinners with a large following and a history of pinning and sharing.

7. Like, re-pin, and comment on other pinner’s pins.

8. Promote more than just products. Meaning, don’t constantly just post pictures of things you want to sell. Pin tips, advice, products from other companies.

9. If you do pin stuff you want to sell, be sure to add a price to your item. When you do, your pin is automatically added to Pinterest’s Gifts section.

10. Be active. Like any social network, activity breeds activity. Don’t just pin it and forget it. Pinners are active searchers, always searching for new things to do, buy, read and share. Give them something new, and do it frequently. At least once per week, preferable more.

11. Turn your Pinterest profile into a website of its own. Fill it up with interesting pinboards that will entice other pinners to want to linger on your boards. Name those pinboards based on keywords that match your business.

12. Create keystone or “big-idea” pinboards. These include things like business book reviews, a collection of your favorite resources, quotes, top-ten lists.

13. But don’t forget to sell. Mix in self-promotion pinboards like Most Popular Products, Featured Clients, Customer Testimonials, Top 10 Blog Posts.

14. Beware of copyright issues! Don’t post pictures that you don’t own. Right now it seems ok to pin interesting stuff from other sites, but DO NOT upload a picture you do not own.

15. Revive old content. Find that great blog post you wrote three years ago that no one reads any more. Pin it to one of your boards for new life.

16. Track your website referral traffic. Is your time on Pinterest worth it? Many businesses waste time on social media that may be better spent with other marketing functions. Look at your website analytics and see if Pinterest is sending you enough traffic to justify the time.

17. Get personal. Have at least one board highlighting a personal interest to let people know you are a human being. Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer loves bourbon and shares his love on his Bourbon Pinboard.

18. Think about search engines when you title your boards. I typed “Pinterest Business Quotes” into Google and found Natalie May’s Quotes pinboard.

19. If you create your own images, and you should, add a watermark to image such as putting your website address at the bottom.

20. Beware! Don’t put all your eggs in the Pinterest basket. There is a question of copyright legality hanging over Pinterest. In fact, Pinterest’s terms of use places the copyright responsibility on the user. I don’t think that one day Pinterest will be shut down because of copyright issues, but strange things often occur when attorneys get involved. Just to be safe, I recommend you keep a database, or bookmark folder with your important pins.

So why is this incomplete? First, because you have to take action. And I mean a lot of action. Don’t let this be just another thing you try when you have time. If you want to find out if Pinterest works for your business, dig in and dig in hard.

Second, everyone’s still learning. Once you start pinning you will learn and innovate. Maybe you already have.

What can you add to this guide?

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I know you say you have a brand. You’ve worked hard on your all your brand elements. But brands don’t happen until someone experiences something. What do your customers experience?

As we’ve discussed many times on this blog, it’s nearly impossible to sell something unique because anyone can sell what you sell. The thing that differentiates you from the competition is the customer experience at the point of brand contact. In fact, the customer experience is part of the the brand equation:

“All companies strive to deliver products or services that are valued by its customers, but the ones with the strongest brands differentiate and delight throughout the entire customer experience. “

- Denise Lee Yohn.

The challenge is to build a differentiated brand experience that becomes a relevant choice for consumers. I think the best way to do that it to use a tool I call The Brand Experience Frame. The brand experience frame is both a physical and psychological boundary.

To illustrate, let’s look at how graduating high school seniors choose where they want to go to college. Around these parts of Central Texas the choice often is often narrowed to Texas A&M and Baylor University. (Disclosure: I am a Baylor graduate.) The two schools are separated by just 90 miles of State Highway 6 in Central Texas.

How do potential students choose between the two schools? By their experience frame.
Texas A&M University experience frame: Aggie Pride
Baylor University experience frame: Christian Learning Environment

Walk the campuses of these two schools and you will both feel and see this experience frame. Students can get academics anywhere. But each student chooses their school based on the experience they want while earning their degree. And that’s how customers choose businesses, if you give them that choice.

Framing Your Brand Experience

Framing your experience makes all the difference in your brand, as illustrated by the two universities above. Your business takes on a personality and creates something memorable for customers. Your brand becomes real, touchable, and talkable.

Unfortunately, many businesses create their brand experience on the fly, as a collection of good ideas. “I like that idea, let’s use that.” “Did you see what XYZ is doing? It’s a great idea and we should do that.” Good ideas collections do not make a brand.

Using the frame as the guide to the brand experience:

• Gives your experience flavor, and that flavor is your brand.
• Stimulates the creativity of creating the experience.
• Creates a cohesive experience.

The key to using the brand experience frame tool is name your frame. Choose a metaphor that frames your brand’s experience. Let me give you some examples:

An experience with Sheehy Team real estate brokerage is a Sporting Event.

An experience with Vintage 101 interior design is Nesting.

An experience with Firebrand social media consultant is Starting a Campfire.
**Disclosure: these companies are current or former clients of The Marketing Spot

Big brand example:
An experience with The Container Store is a A Dance Lesson

Using the Brand Experience Frame Tool

There’s nothing complicated about the frame. You can draw one on a sheet of paper or download my pretty one here: Brand Experience Frame (right click and “save link as”)

1. Name your frame with a metaphor. Try out several metaphors and find the one that best fits your brand promise and brand personality.
2. Fill out your frame with key attributes of your metaphor. A campfire is hot, it needs a spark, it needs kindling, it is a gathering place. Write everything in the middle of your frame.
3. Turn those attributes into brand experience initiatives. Choose the top three attributes and apply those to your brand promise. Ask yourself: “How you I create an experience point for my customers?”

Your brand experience frame is the starting line for your brand experience initiatives. These are the things that separate your brand from your industry. The brand experience frame is a powerful tool that yields differentiation.

Because a brand doesn’t exist until someone experiences it.

What are the experience points of your brand?

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 2012 online ad spending will increase 23%. Local online ad spending is projected to be about 20% of total ad spending this year. By 2016, eMarketer projects that online will comprise one-third of all media spending. How does that compare with your online advertising budget? It’s time to consider online advertising for your marketing mix.

But consider where?

Local Online Advertising Channels

Where to advertise online? Let’s start big, and the biggest is Google.

Google Adwords

Sometimes also referred to pay-per-click, PPC, and search marketing.

Google is not just a search engine it’s the number one visited website on the internet. It’s also an advertising machine, and for good reason. People searching on Google are looking for something, and that includes things to buy. Statistics suggest that anywhere from 60-68% of all searches happen on Google and Google’s own research says that 20% of those searches have a local intent. Local intent on mobile searches is 40%.

Any size business can afford Google PPC Advertising because you control the exact amount you want to invest. This video from Google shows how easy it is to get started on Google Adwords.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For more see: Getting started with Google Adwords Campaigns
Before you launch your campaign, see: PPC Starter Tips
To dive in, you can get started here: Advertise your business on Google

Facebook Advertising

Facebook now has a reported 845 million users. Wow! And those users spend an average of 7 hours per month on Facebook. Wow again! Half of Facebook’s users log on every day. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Everyone should advertise on Facebook. But not so fast.

People go to Google to search for stuff they’re interested in buying. People use Facebook to socialize. That could be the reason that click-through-rates (CTR) are lower for Facebook ads than for Google. In fact, Facebook’s CTR is about half the industry average. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use Facebook, just be aware that you may have to work harder to get a click.

Like Google, any size business can afford advertising on Facebook, because you control the exact maximum amount you want to invest. However, small businesses have fewer options than big business on Facebook. The much-touted new Facebook Premium Ads are only available with a minimum investment of $25,000.

Still, there are a variety of ways to advertise on Facebook with typical display ads as well as sponsored stories (soon to be known as “featured stories).

Before starting, check out this free PDF eBook from Facebook:

(Right click and “save link as”)

Then log on to your Facebook account and begin creating your ad here:
Facebook Ad Campaign Creator

To learn more about using Sponsored Stories:
Using Facebook Sponsored Stories

**Facebook Advertising Tip:
You will be asked to either choose pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-per-impressions (CPM) when you create your Facebook ad. I have personally tested both in a side-by-side ad and PPC performs better. It looks more enticing, and cheaper, to do CPM, but I recommend you use PPC.

What tips do you have?

Related Posts:

New Webinar: The Three Big Guns of Marketing Your Small Business Online
What’s the Best Time to Post on Facebook?
The Science and Art of Your Facebook Posting Strategy

First start with my four essential spots of marketing, which I call “The Marketing Circle of Life.” I will frame all my recommendations below around the four essentials spots: Branding, Experience, Conversation, Promotion. Let’s dive in, shall we?
[Disclosure: I have read all the books I recommend. Also, the book links below DO contain affiliate links. You don’t pay any extra for the books, but if you buy, I make a few cents.]

BOOKS

I. Branding

1. Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout
The classic book on branding. An excellent starter book on marketing.

2. Microbranding: Build a Powerful Personal Brand by T. Scott Gross
One of the best small business branding books written. Easy to understand and follow.

3. The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design by Marty Neumeier
Goes deeper into branding.  Helps you understand the concepts of what makes an exceptional brand.

4. Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Youngme Moon
An advanced book on branding concepts and a game changer. One of the best books written on differentiation.

II. Experience

1. The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage by Joe Pine and James Gilmore
The realization that your business is a stage and not a product to be bought.

2. What’s the Secret: To Providing a World-Class Customer Experience By John DiJulius
Guides you through the basics of customer experience design and delivery.

3. Positively Outrageous Service: How to Delight and Astound Your Customers and Win Them for Life Service by T. Scott Gross
How to take your customer service to a new level with great real-life examples.

4. Consumerology: The Market Research Myth, the Truth About Consumers, and the Psychology of Shopping by Philip Graves
Important insights on how customers make decisions. You will adjust your product offering after reading this book

III. Conversation

1. Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking by Andy Sernovitz
The basics of word of mouth marketing simply presented.

2. Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force by Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell
Excellent framework for creating brand fans who want to spread your word.

3. The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott
How to spread word-of-mouth conversation online.

4. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath
How to make your word-of-mouth messages memorable and make people want to re-tell them.

IV. Promotion

1. Madscam: Kick-Ass Advertising Without the Madison Avenue Price Tag by George Parker
Basic book on traditional forms of marketing and advertising.

2. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads by Luke Sullivan
Focuses on message creation and creating advertising campaigns.

3. The Micro-Script Rules: It’s not what people hear. It’s what they repeat… by Bill Schley
Crosses the chasm between conversation and promotion. Mainly about how to create bite-size messages. Excellent for creating your tagline.

4. Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Joe Sugarman
From the man who brought you BluBlocker sunglasses, this gold mine of copywriting tips and techniques.

V. Entrepreneurship

1.The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber
A book every small business owner should read. How to take that “entrepreneurial seizure” and turn it into a sustainable business.

2.The Myth of Excellence: Why Great Companies Never Try to Be the Best at Everything by Fred Crawford and Ryan Matthews
Maybe the most important book a new entrepreneur can read. Dispels the notion that you have to be good at everything. One of my favorite “unknown” books.

3. Growing a Business by Paul Hawken
This gem is more than 20 years old, but Paul Hawken’s advice on growing a business is timeless. I read this book for the first time last year.

BLOGS

Blogs are the most valuable resource for keeping up with current marketing trends and technologies. You’ll notice an absence of social media and digital marketing books in the list above. That’s because it evolves too quickly to put it in book form. I prefer blogs for social media and digital marketing information. Here are my recommended blogs:

I. Branding

1. Brand Autopsy by John Moore – Former Starbucks and Whole Foods marketer John Moore deals concise and introspective branding advice with a dose of word-of-mouth.

2. Brand as Business Bites by Denise Lee Yohn – Denise shares brand advice through excellent brand analysis of popular brands.

3. Branding Strategy Insider by several authors. Deep and thorough branding strategy.

4. The Marketing Spot blog by Jay Ehret (me) – While I write about all four spots, it all starts with your brand and branding receives a lot of my attention.

II. Experience

It’s getting difficult to find good customer experience blogs that are consistently updated. Many of my old favorites have morphed into social media blogs. So please feel free to suggest some to me.

1. Experience Delivers by Adobe. Wide and sweeping coverage of the customer experience, and unfortunately, a bit too infrequent.

2. Customer Experience Matters by Bruce Temkin – Bruce shares customer experience insights with a good dose of research.

III. Conversation

1. Social Media Explorer by Jason Falls
A deep dive into social media strategy, tactics and tools

2. Convince and Convert by Jay Baer
Covers a wide range of social media issues for the purpose of converting fans into customers.

3. The Digital Influence Mapping Project by John Bell
Thought-provoking analysis of social media and digital marketing

4. WOM Matters by Keller Fay Group
Online and offline word-of-mouth analysis backed up by research.

IV. Promotion

1. Post Advertising by Story Worldwide
Advertising blog with a focus on digital marketing, but not exclusively digital.

2. Direct Creative Blog by Dean Rieck
Copywriting and direct-marketing blog with lots of practical tips and how-to’s.

3. Online Marketing Blog by Lee Odden
Thorough analysis of both the strategy and tactics of digital marketing.

4. Screenwerk by Greg Sterling
Online and offline media with lots of stats and current trends.

MAGAZINES

It’s getting more difficult to get good marketing magazines in this digital age. But a few are still printed and are excellent resources.

1. Scientific American Mind
Not a marketing magazine but definitely a magazine for marketers. Helps you better understand the thinking that goes behind customer decisions.

2. Website Magazine
Practical tips and concepts for online marketing. A great resource.

3. Target Marketing Magazine
Bills itself as a direct marketing magazine but swerves into other areas of marketing.

There’s a lot here. I would start by picking just one book from branding and then proceeding with one book from each of the other categories. Don’t let the list intimidate you. This my list, and of course, it’s incomplete. Please share your recommendations in the comment section below.

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.

We know that most people are NOT price only shoppers. What customers really want is a good value. Real value is when the customer believes they are getting something greater than the price they are paying.

There are two sides to this equation, the price side and the value side, as I demonstrated here: The Price vs. Perceived Value Equation

Far too often, businesses work on the price side of the equation rather than the value side, reducing the price rather than raising the value of the product or service being sold. Sales slip, customers aren’t buying, prices get lowered. Blatant slashing of prices is just one way businesses focus too much on price. Another more insidious way is to “add more for the money.”

Some businesses think that by giving the customer extra stuff for the price tag, they are actually working on the value side of the equation. Unfortunately, they’re not. For example, a business might offer larger portions, extra services, additional products for the same price. This is not adding value, it’s actually lowering the price of these additional benefits to zero, again working on the price side of the equation. So, how do you add value? Let’s look at two ways: through innovation and the customer’s experience.

Innovation

Innovation means to introduce something new or different. It happens on three levels: products, processes, and delivery.

You can be innovative by offering a product or service that is not currently being offered. Oh boy, how do you do that? Your competition can sell the same thing that you can sell, right? Yes, they can, but you can enhance that product through innovation.

In the HGTV show Color Splash, designer David Bromstad often creates an original piece of art for each home he transforms. Local Waco, Texas designer Missy Balusek of Vintage 101 also does this by creating a unique piece of furniture to each home that she designs. (Disclosure: Vintage 101 is a client.) Both David and Missy sell the same thing as their competition, design services, but they are innovative in that they also offer something that cannot be offered by their competition.

How can you be innovative in selling what you sell?
What can only you offer that your competition cannot?

Now, let’s look at your processes. The best way to be innovative with your processes is to imprint them with your personality and your ideas. For example, I am a marketing coach and consultant. I’ll bet if you toss a shoe out of your office window you will probably hit a marketing consultant in the head. There are a lot of them. How can I possibly stand out? By developing my own process for delivering marketing advice.

That’s why I developed the Four Spot Marketing Model. During the process of coaching my clients, they receive a work book and get an education in marketing. That’s my unique process. If clients perceive it to be more innovative, they also perceive it to be more valuable, and I can charge a fair price for my services.

What process can you create that is uniquely you?

The final level of innovation is delivery, how you deliver what you sell. That, my fellow entrepreneur is why the customer experience is so important. The customer experience is the delivery channel of what you sell.

The Customer’s Experience

The most powerful way to work on the value side of the equation is to enhance the customer’s experience. People will pay more for an innovative experience that they perceive as more valuable than an average experience. That’s why people pay more to eat in upscale restaurants. Sure, the food is great at places like Cheeves Bros. Steakhouse in Temple, Texas, but it’s the experience that justifies the check. It’s why couples carefully choose where they will celebrate Valentine’s Day, and why they’re willing to pay more for an experience they’ll remember. And that’s the key: making memories.

I recently wrote an article for The Washington Post describing how memorable customer experiences enhance the value of your brand. Creating specific memories in your customer’s experience is innovative, because those memories cannot happen any place other than your business. When those memories get retold, your business gets talked about. Thus the value of what you sell increases.
Read the full article here: Creating Magic Moments for Customers

How can you create memories in your customer experience?

It’s time to spend more time on the value side of the equation. Maybe you can charge a price that both you and the customer think is fair.

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.

We’ve reached a maturity level in social media marketing that has been a long time coming. Companies and brands are no longer approaching the web and all of its social connections and technologies with the sandbox approach. The tide began turning about nine months ago. CEOs, marketing directors and more stopped saying, “we want a blog,” or “we want a Facebook page,” and started asking for social media strategies to drive sales, enhance their brand awareness or facilitate customer service.

Attacking social media marketing from a tactical point of view only gets you tactical results. Yes, you can put lots of effort and energy into your Facebook brand page, but the metrics you’re going to see if you don’t connect those dots from tactical execution to strategic business purpose are limited. Fans or followers, comments or shares. That’s it.

When you approach Facebook (or a blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) with a holistic and strategic purpose, you don’t ask, “How can we get more people to like our page?” Rather you focus on questions like, “How can we drive more sales from our Facebook audience.”

But in order to focus on social media marketing as a strategic business driver you have to understand what social media marketing can do for your business. Then you have to understand the strategic planning process. Knowing both helps you plan, execute, measure and even report more effectively.

What Social Media Marketing Can Do For Your Business

Diving into the waters of social media without first knowing what the possibilities are is like wandering through the woods without a compass, map or even trail to follow. Sooner or later, you’re going to get disoriented and lost. In my experience, clients have identified seven major business drivers for social media marketing. These serve as the possibilities. They are:

• Enhancing Branding and Awareness
• Protecting Your Reputation
• Extending Public Relations
• Building Community
• Enhancing Customer Service
• Facilitating Research and Development
• Driving Sales or Leads

Each has their own business purpose and can lead to significant accomplishments for businesses and brands. I use these seven categories to level-set expectations and goals for the companies and clients I work with. “Which of these areas do you want to focus on with your social media efforts?” “Are any of your current weak points represented by these categories?’

From there, we select a goal or goals and begin the strategic planning process.

Strategic Planning Basics

The strategic planning process goes as follows:

1. Establish Goals
2. Develop measurable objectives
3. Enact strategies which help accomplish the objectives
4. Execute tactics that accomplish the strategies.

Executing that process is easier said that done, but it only involves working backwards — accomplish the tactics which achieve the strategies that fuel the objectives that accomplish the goals.

The challenge is getting your focus out of the tactical weeds. Foursquare, Twitter, YouTube … none are strategic focal points. Engagement, sales, customer service, lead generation … these are all strategic focal points. What are you trying to accomplish with social media marketing? Place your focus there and you can start to see clarity in decision-making, execution with a purpose, and even measurement and reporting that keeps bosses happy and businesses empowered.

From operationalizing social media across the organization to using social media data for business insights, we’re going to dive deep into social media marketing from a strategic perspective at Explore Dallas-Fort Worth on Feb. 17 at Union Station Dallas. We’ll present brand case studies, get insights from real-world practitioners driving business (not just likes and follows) with social media marketing. We’ll have a state of journalism in the social world panel discussion for public relations professionals and enjoy a fireside chat with Chris Baccus of AT&T to see how the communications giant is tackling everything from managing social media internally to handling detractors online.

We’d be honored if you joined us. It’s a full day of learning social media marketing from a strategic perspective and is sure to help drive your business forward. Register now and use the code MARKETINGSPOT to get 50% off the ticket price!

Jason Falls is an author, speaker and CEO of Social Media Explorer. One of the top 10 influencers in social media according to Forbes, Falls hosts Explore, a five-city social media and digital marketing learning event, around the country. Find him on Twitter at @JasonFalls.

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 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.