Consistent Brand Messaging When Building Your Personal Brand

Building a powerful personal brand starts with you. How you present yourself publicly and online strongly affects how your brand is interpreted by the masses. Because your personal brand is a reflection of who you are personally, you must be aware, the totality of your actions will determine your brand.

Nurturing Your Brand Through Authenticity

Your brand is your legacy. Once you establish what you want your brand message to be, you must own it. How you present yourself to the world will define your brand culture – make it memorable. Your actions, expertise, and emotional connection to your brand will define how it is viewed. Offer something valuable only you can provide to the public; live it, and you will garner true authenticity.

Build Character – Online and Off

In the digital age, your online presence with social media has become your touchstone. This is where you engage those interested in your brand. Make sure the design of your online outlets closely aligns with your character and brand message. Whether you have a design team or one person working on creative, make sure there is an understanding of your brand’s uniqueness, your character is clearly interpreted, and don’t forget, a picture is worth a thousand words and this is your moment to shine. It will aid in your social media marketing campaign.

Consistent Brand Messaging

Current and potential clients want consistency. They want to know you will deliver each time with the same or better results. Your clients want to trust you, they want to count on you to be the answer. Consistency in your communications gives clients something to rely on. If you deliver strong and consistent communications, your clients will become evangelists of your brand. 

For more information on how you can build a powerful personal brand, contact the professionals at TwoGirlsConsulting LLC. We understand your physical and digital image must exude your brand. Enticing and consistent communication of your personal brand relies on a carefully crafted strategy. At 2GC, your image is everything.

 

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Does Your Marketing Strategy Begin in the Right Place?

It never ceases to amaze me how many business owners spend all kinds of time and other resources creating and implementing a marketing strategy that begins at step two. They either ignore the important first step altogether, or pay so little attention to it that it contributes little or nothing of value to the final plan.

What I’m talking about here is developing a profile of your ideal customer. A good definition for the term “ideal customer” is; someone who is most likely to buy from you.

Many business owners don’t understand this essential first step in creating an overall marketing strategy. The reason it’s so important is; by having a handle on what your ideal customer looks like, you’ll be in a better position to determine which marketing techniques are likely to be effective and which are not.

For example, if you were a heating and air conditioning contractor, you would probably be wasting valuable marketing resources if you sent marketing materials to residents of an apartment complex. The apartment owner or manager would typically make decisions on such services, not the residents themselves.

Having a profile of your ideal customer and carefully considering that information when creating a marketing strategy is important regardless of what business you’re in.

So, how do you go about developing a profile of your ideal customer? By asking and answering several questions. For example:

• Is your ideal customer male or female?
• What age range do they fall into?
• What is their education level?
• Are they married, divorced, widowed, or single?
• What is their income range?
• What do they enjoy doing in their spare time?
• What challenges do they typically face?
• What are their dreams and goals?
• Do they spend time on the internet? If so, where and for how long?
• Do they engage in social media? If so, which platforms?
• What types of businesses already market to them?
• How do those businesses market to them?

Having answers to these, and other questions, will put you in a place to make educated decisions on which marketing tools and techniques will be most effective in your market.

Of course, identifying your ideal customer doesn’t preclude you from doing business with those who don’t fit your profile. You just won’t be focusing your marketing efforts on them.

If you’d like help creating a marketing strategy for your business, contact us online or call 702-738-1197.

 

The Importance of Organizational Culture When Choosing Marketing Specialists

Whenever you are interested in working with a marketing firm for purposes such as coming up with promotions, it’s often a good idea to make sure you work with one that has a solid organizational culture. According to the Harvard Business Review, organizational culture “plays a crucial role in shaping behavior in organizations.” When most people are interested in working with such organizations, they often don’t consider the culture and practices within the organization. Most of the time, they think about issues such as how much it will cost them to use the services.

However, remember when dealing with creative subjects such as advertising, you need to ensure everyone on the team will be on board and will have the same determination to help you succeed. Of course, you could easily find a marketing firm to work in helping you come up with a marketing solution, however, if they don’t have the right work ethic and culture, you are likely to end up not getting good value for the money in the long run.

There are some ways in which this can happen. For instance, you may find dealing with the employees of the firm is not as easy as it can be. You might find it more fun to interact with people with positive attitudes towards what they do, and this  usually happens when the firm promotes a supportive organizational culture. In addition, this can also have an effect on the quality of service you receive from them. For instance, if you work with a negative company, and find the staff is not committed to what they do, it means you might not receive value for your money. They may not be spurred to produce the best they can, and this can mean your company might end up getting service that are barely just good enough.

If you are interested in marketing and working with a third-party, it is vital you find a company with a sound work ethic. This way it will be easy for you to interact  and the ability to gain more than anticipated. If you are interested in this kind of service, all you need to do is contact us. We strive to make sure that our organizational culture is as nurturing as possible, and most of our past clients have found this to be one of our best traits.

A New Logo, Now What?

The new logo for our new division.

So your enterprise is sporting a new logo, now what? You might think it’s easy to continue to market your brand the same way you did before, but it’s not. Now’s the time to saturate your audience with your new brand development. With change comes progress; so always keep in mind that change is good, and often great.

Current logo

Due to frequent changes in the economy, social issues, and technology, the expertise of businesses often change. This is why companies rework or recreate their brand; emerging with a new, improved, and “fresh” new image. A branding “face lift” can work wonders for your company by re-introducing you to your loyal customers, and reaching an even larger audience. The idea is for you to say “I’m breaking brand.”

Another version

Give your business cards a make-over, making your new logo the star.

Redesign your websites, keeping new and potential clients in mind.

All business stationery, most importantly letterheads, will need to feature your new brand.

Don’t just change the logo on your products; give them all fresh new labeling.

And yet another version.

If you offer clothing items, think about expanding the styles offered; if you don’t offer clothing, think about doing so. T-shirts are a great way to increase visibility of the brand.

For more information on how to increase your brand visibility and interaction, contact. And, remember always represent your

Original logo from 2008

• product/services
• reputation
• rates
• logo/tagline
• customer service that supports your business.
• brand’s promise.
• customer’s feelings about your business. 

 

Earned Media: Building an Integrated Strategy

Earned media is an elusive form of marketing in which your company is promoted by positive media that comes from outside the company itself.  News stories, radio interviews, and positive reviews can all constitute earned media.  Earned media is alluring because it costs nothing for the business, yet can significantly increase overall revenue.

While by definition a company cannot buy or create its own earned media, there are a few strategies that can increase your company’s chances of gaining earned media.  One of the best ways to increase the earned media that your company receives is to design an integrated strategy that blends content marketing strategies with earned media potential.

Make Your Business Easy To Present.  As soon as possible, spend time developing an elevator pitch for your business.  Highlight the attributes that make your business unique, and write your company’s vision.  This makes it easier for media outlets to highlight your business in a coherent manner, without causing journalists the frustration of having to unearth your company’s vision and purpose on their own.

Develop Your Own Media Marketing Strategies.  Using media strategies such as content marketing will increase your company’s visibility and thus the likelihood gaining earned media.  Making your company searchable by developing a presence on social networks and other sites makes it easier for your company to be ‘found.’

Do Something Out Of The Box.  In order to be newsworthy, your company needs to be doing something different from the competition.  What is your company doing to stand out from the crowd?  Determine your company’s unique aspects, and don’t hesitate to make them known.

By establishing a robust marketing strategy, it will be easier for news outlets to highlight your company through earned media.  Take the time to invest in your company, and the earned media will follow.  To learn more about ways to improve your small business, please visit our website and contact us with questions or comments.

PR Effectiveness: Gauging the Many Elements Beyond Sales for Your Campaign

PR effectiveness is a wide picture to be analyzed through different avenues and not strictly by how much money is made. While making money shows a campaign was successful, it may not sustain in the ever-changing social environment. Looking at exactly what prompted those sales can help decide whether it was the result of something unexpected.

Analytics on Social Media

With Google Analytics being such a useful tool in determining web traffic, a firm can discover plenty of evidence in how people reacted to something online. If it was determined the sales were from social media influence, then the main demographics can be known. And despite social media being the place where you’d expect most of the activity to be, there may be a chance sales came significantly from somewhere else.

Analyzing Other Media

Television continues to play just as strong an impact in sales as social media. Most of the time, they work in tandem though mentions from a client on a national TV show or cable news can take sales into the stratosphere. A mention like this (or in a national newspaper) can be the result of an earlier promotion on social media without having spent a dime on a television or a newspaper ad. These interconnections tell a PR firm how the inter-connectivity of today’s media can effectively disseminate enough free information to cut costs of promotion.

Study the Advantages of Small Media

Sometimes sales can be the result of a simple word-of-mouth grassroots campaign or write-ups in small publications. While these might be graded as minor promotional places, it’s worth doing some investigation into these arenas and why they potentially do better than expected. Smaller and more peripheral avenues also typically conjoin with social media for easier methods of passing on information.

Survey the Consumers

Gauging information directly from those who bought a promoted product can help determine where those consumers heard about the product or client. There may be a surprise in store for where they heard about the product through the earlier examples. This may prove the underestimation in the power of fan campaigns by simple word-of-mouth. Determining it can be done through online surveys, telephone, or traditional mail.

Talk to the Client

PR firms need to think of their client and the effectiveness of the PR campaign. Does the client understand what the PR firm is doing and the procedures in how it’s being done? A happy client is a client that understands the entire process of an effective PR plan with a comprehensive understanding of why it was effective.

Contact us if you’re a company needing an effective local or national marketing campaign. Two Girls Consulting (2GC) is based in Las Vegas, Nevada. We also work on a national level. With a decade of experience, plus long-standing relationships with media and other venues, let us effectively take your company message to the masses.

Marketing Strategies: What Draws the Eye?

Content marketing is a powerful tool for increasing your company’s visibility and authority in a field.  If your company is investing in content marketing, you are likely producing a valuable body of work you hope will be accessible to clients.   However, if you want to draw an audience to your work, keep in mind the way information is organized is almost as important as the information itself.  Here are a few tips for keeping information user-friendly:

1. People Love Lists.  Use lists if you want to engage site visitors from beginning to end. Lists are easy to conceptualize, and they encourage people to read an entire post from start to finish.

2. Keep Your Content Fresh.  Humans crave newness and will invariably be drawn to novel information.  If the material you present isn’t engaging, people will navigate away from your site in the click of a mouse.  Satisfy your audiences’ need for originality by keeping information new.

3. Make it Pithy.  Many people have short attention spans, especially online.  Don’t overwhelm your audience with lengthy posts.  Break up your information and keep it short so people will remember it better.

4. Pictures Draw the Eye.  Don’t hesitate to incorporate pictures and color into your content.  Too many images can make a page overwhelming, but a few images will attract attention.  In addition, make sure that your company logo is attractive and prominently displayed.

5. Ask Questions.  People are interested in themselves, which means they will be interested in hearing their own input.  Use this to your advantage by posing questions and giving people a chance to interact with your content.

Want to learn more about content marketing and other marketing strategies? Please contact us with any questions.  We would love to hear from you!

Avoid These Mistakes for a Better Social Media Content Strategy

You invest significant time and money into your social media content strategy. Yet, you still ask yourself, “What can I do to secure a higher return on influence for the resources I expend on content marketing?”  There are a few common mistakes that businesses make when trying to engage clients through social media.  Here are a few to avoid:

• Not Posting Enough.  We live in a fast-paced society, and clients are constantly hungry for fresh information.  To keep people coming back to your site, make sure to post new content regularly.  Websites that stagnate will quickly lose interest and clients.
• Information is Too Dense.  People are busy and don’t want to wade through dense articles for information.  While you should avoid posting fluff, as this will generate little interest, spend time ensuring that your content is user-friendly.  Break up dense articles into smaller sections, and format your content so information appears in bullets rather than in blocks of text.
• Wasting Time Responding to all Comments.  It’s easy to become distracted on social media, especially if your audience is fully engaged.  However, keep in mind you don’t need to respond to every comment posted if you have other pressing projects on hand.  Respond to important remarks, and make sure that your comments are relevant.  Otherwise you can spend days on social media without accomplishing anything else.
• Staying Blind to Impact.  Do you know which leads and opportunities are coming from your social media marketing?  Find a way to measure social media’s impact on your business, whether by using online tools to measure page views or by asking people how they learned about your company.  Measuring social media’s impact will allow you to adjust the amount of energy you spend on social media marketing.

Companies that make these mistakes waste time and fail to fully engage an audience, while companies that avoid them see a higher return on influence in social media.  Want to learn more about successful business marketing strategies?   Contact us with any questions.

Storytelling for Creative Business Growth

Many businesses use tools and techniques like SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities) analysis to examine competitive actions and to plan business growth initiatives.  Yet, these meetings often conclude with few actionable or innovative ideas.

Consider a new tool, “Kill the Company” based upon Lisa Bodell’s new book of the same title.  In Kill the Company, employees are encouraged to take an outside view of their own firm and create ways that they, as a competitor, would put them out of business.  Employees are energetically engaged in the activity and with their inside knowledge can come up with great ideas.

Killing the company begins with storytelling as employees design ways to put the firm out of business.  Knowing that the company has a weakness in its distribution chain, employees will craft narratives to exploit the weakness.  Employees are often more engaged and creative in an environment where they design stories to kill the company rather than a dull competitive analysis resulting in lengthy to-do lists.

For example, a kill the company idea might be to offer products at no charge to customers.  That certainly would put a firm out of business!  Yet, the idea has a seed of an innovative marketing campaign built into it.  The company might consider giving away free products when the customer buys a service package.  Or a retail firm could offer “buy one, get one free” promotions to target customers.

Business growth depends on creative ideas and staying one step ahead of the competition.  Considering a new viewpoint – as a competitor from the outside of your company – might just offer a keen insight to a strategic growth path you’d never before examined.

For more information on competitive analysis and business growth, please contact us.

Small Business Marketing Strategies: Leverage Your Network

Many small businesses spend a large part of their budget on marketing to generate new business prospects.  For many small businesses, new clients come from referrals which is a different kind of marketing altogether.  In addition to print and online marketing strategies, small businesses should keep their networks in mind with regard to finding potential clients.  Leveraging a network is one of the most effective, low-cost marketing strategies to add projects to the pipeline.  Here are a few ways to leverage your network:

Start With Your Primary Circle

Identify connections within your primary circle — people with whom you would like to communicate regularly.  Who shares your business vision?  Who is likely to have a healthy network of like-minded people?  It’s nearly impossible to maintain strong connections with a large number of people, so focus on a group of 20 or less for your primary connections.  Once you have identified these people, make sure to connect regularly.

Communicate What You Need

In order to find business opportunities within your network, you need to communicate about your business.  Otherwise, nobody will know how to help you.  Prepare an elevator speech describing what your business does, and don’t hesitate to tell people about your professional life.  When you are looking for more business, make sure to ask for referrals and introductions when appropriate.

Reach Out and Keep Connections Alive

Do not hesitate to initiate contact with network connections, even if you haven’t been in touch for a long time.  This can be done by phone or email, or through social media sites such as LinkedIn.  Although it may be initially uncomfortable to reach out, many people are responsive and will be glad to reconnect over lunch or coffee.

Give and Take

One of the best ways to leverage your network and improve your chances of finding business possibilities is by helping others first.  By helping others, you are creating an environment in which others will be happy to return the favor, and are avoiding the trap of only interacting with others when you need something.

For more advice on marketing and communication strategies, please visit our website.  If you have any questions or would like to speak with us, feel free to contact us!