15 Ideas to Supercharge Your Brand in Marketing

As marketing types, we confess to having a visual bias when it comes to an expression of a brand in marketing. We tend to experience a brand primarily through our eyes, by watching how it can supercharge your brand in marketing.

And when we’re working with clients on a creative branding project, one of our first steps is to create a book of selected pictures and graphics.

We are particularly looking for ones that create a feeling of the brand’s character.

Check out our thoughts on creative marketing.

Do you express feelings and emotions often with your customers? Are you aware of the ways you are can influence brand attention?

Well, remember this: the more feelings and emotions you express, the more attention to your brand. And the more influence it can create.

Not rocket science is it? But without it, you will be losing attention to your brand.

As long as it’s positive, there is no such thing as too much brand attention.

If you play your cards right, you can roll all of that great attention into growth for your company.

So why not take explicit branding actions to influence these opinions.

It makes sense then that you spend some energy making it something you believe will positively impact customers. Do not just let it happen, right?

Let’s dig further into this important marketing topic.

IMPORTANCE OF BRANDING

The ‘surplus society’ has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality.

Funky Business Forever

We like to quote from this book Funky Business Forever when we discuss brands or branding with our clients.

It is not easy being different, is it? But all the more important.

One of the truths of modern business is that there is almost nothing that your competitors can’t duplicate in a matter of weeks or months.

If you have a great idea, you can be certain that somebody will copy it before long.

And not only will they follow your lead, but they may also be able to do a better job or sell the product or service at a lower price. The question then becomes, “What competitive edge do I have to offer that cannot be copied by anyone else?

The answer? Your business brand identity.

No branding, no long term differentiation. No differentiation, no long-term profitability.

Brands can activate a passionate group of people to do something like embrace an important community issue. Products or services can’t do that.

Most brands sell products or services. GM sells cars. Amazon sells books. Real estate brokerages sell homes.

Killer brands, however, satisfy the desire to get at the emotional heart of the matter.

Let’s review five killer brands and what they stand for. This is the best way to appreciate the importance of branding, emotion and most importantly, brand identity.

 JetBlue

JetBlue’s brand success centers on the achievable – the simple things. They knew these would make a difference for their guests.

This set the stage for direct TV and XM radio, the provision of first-class seats to everyone, more legroom, great snacks and high-end service at lower end pricing.

No other airline offers these value propositions. They are different, and their brand stands out because it represents those differences.

Simple. Attainable. Targeted. They deliver.

Nike

Nike is the name of the winged Greek goddess of victory, and the logo represents the spirit of this goddess. It is wrapped in emotional appeal.

Ask anyone who works in marketing what Nike stands for, and you’re likely to hear the same three words: “authentic athletic performance.”

Their goal is to be associated with customers that desire to be high performance, high notch athletes, achievers, and winners.

Zappos

They don’t sell shoes. They deliver that extra dose of love we all need from time to time.

There is no secret here. Zappos became Zappos because of the fanatical customer support it offered. That is the company’s brand.

As Tony Hsieh, the Zappos CEO, puts it, back in 2003, we thought of ourselves as a shoe company that offered great service.

Today, we think of the Zappos brand as about great service, and we just happen to sell shoes.

Ritz Carlton

Ritz Carlton’s desire is to create guests for life. The brand desires to represent stories of extraordinary service and random acts of kindness.

Ritz Carlton focuses their attention on impeccable service standards to separate themselves from other hotels.

What Ritz-Carlton has done so well is operationalize it so that culture and brand are one. Much like what Zappos has done.

Related post: How to Frame Marketing Messages for Optimum Engagement

FedEx

Simply put, the FedEx brand is synonymous with “reliability.”

Define your benefit to customers in the most straightforward terms possible. If your promise is reliability, then you need to offer reliability in everything you do.

Reliability from your products and services to your website and communications.  It is a peace of mind.

FedEx famously built its brand around a singular idea.

This idea means coming through when something  “absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” 

So is this what killer branding is all about for companies?

We think so.

Not just about business. But also by making it personal for customers.

A great way to stand out.

How Creative Branding Helps Marketing

Social isn’t a new way of marketing; it’s a new way of doing business.

So what are some of the best ways different businesses use their creative branding to market their products and services?

Let’s take a close look at some of the best uses of branding forces:

Differentiation

There is no more powerful component of a brand’s force than its differentiation.

JetBlue’s brand screams out how it is different. And better. Free Direct TV and XM satellite radio onboard their aircraft. Leather seats. Unlimited snacks. Great legroom.

Think of these discriminators, and you’ll think of the JetBlue brand.

examples of branding
Examples of branding.

Unique positioning

Businesses should always be looking to reinforce their unique positioning.

Like Best Buy and its employee expertise in home electronics.

They have continued to strengthen this unique positioning with their Geek Squad and Tweep Force.

Positive experience

The Starbuck’s experience. Certainly, it defines a positive brand feeling for its target customers.

Unique products. Unique store atmosphere. Experiences to stimulate all the senses … visual, hearing, aroma, taste, and touch.

Unforgettable

Have you ever been in a Whole Foods store? Not your average presentation style of culinary products.

Helping customer visualize the full store and product experience.  And taking grocery shopping to an interactive and collaborative new level.

Unique and unforgettable. No wonder more top of the line grocery chains has been quickly following Whole Food’s lead.

Positive image

Create positive mental images? In our opinion, no one is better at this than Zappos, the online shoe and clothing retailer.

Focused on delivering happiness and being the best in the business in customer service.

There is lots of value in surprising customers with random acts of kindness and special service.

Communications

A brand communicates every time it touches the customer … the moment of truth.

It communicates with words, stories, emotions, and personality. Yes, its personality.

Marketing needs to manage all of these communications, making marketing responsible for each ˜moment of truth”.

We include everyone in the marketing realm. No one does more of this communication management or does it better than Google.

They live and breathe their personality.

Immersion

Customer immersion in the products and services.

Disney World is certainly very good at customer immersion in its entertainment themes.

Bass Pro Shop is very good at immersion in its products by setting up areas around its stores where customers can go and try their skills.

Testing their skills with Bass Pro Shop products. A unique branding style.

Giving back

As Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream brand puts it: “There is a spiritual aspect to our lives, when we give we receive.

When a business does something good for somebody, that somebody feels good about them.”

And that emotion reflects positively on the brand.

Trust

Not many customers think about what the company’s processor is on their computer.

And it is not because they don’t care. They just assume it is an Intel product.

They buy the best technology and its reflection of customer trust in the brand and its products.

Remember this last input. Markets and customers are constantly changing.

Therefore a business must constantly adapt its branding to the changes in the marketplace.

Branding in marketing …. Making your brand stand out

Be useful or entertaining … or be ignored.

We focus on five areas to make a brand stand out … just 5.

Think about the following areas for your brand.

Distinctive voice

When we’re working with clients on a creative branding project, one of our first steps is to create a book of selected pictures and graphics. Ones that create a feeling of the brand’s character.

The next step though is the expression of the brand through words. The message, we feel, is just as crucial and maybe more so.

Taco Bell isn’t a luxurious brand, and it doesn’t pretend to be. Instead, the brand’s voice is one of a trusted friend that will never fail to make you laugh.

Just look at their sauce packets, which feature unique messages that have diners staring at their condiments for far longer than normal.

Fun phrases such as, “Pick me!” and “Will you marry me?” manage to bring humor into the fast-food experience.

Their Twitter account carries that same fun-loving attitude — even when their customers complain.

The account doesn’t feign pretentiousness, and by having a genuine brand voice, Taco Bell adds a human side to their marketing.

The decision to use those terms is the first step on the way to creating a corporate story that differentiates and distinguishes. It’s just that most companies never take the next step and end up sounding like every other company in their communications.

When you tell your creative branding story, create a distinctive voice with unique images … dare to create different feelings and emotions with your communities.

What is your favorite brand voice?

Reflect your culture

The front line of any brand in the marketplace is not the advertising, packaging, or product design. It is the interaction that the customer experiences that determine the brand’s reputation.

It is human and emotion. At that critical time when a customer engages with one of your employees or someone in your channel, your brand will either be enhanced or diminished.

Who does it the best? We would say Zappos.

We are BIG fans of Zappos and its company culture and brand.

Zappos is well-known for its culture and customer focus, and its company culture is built around maximum, personalized customer engagement.

Want to know one of the most effective examples that Zappos uses to build its brand and create reciprocity with its customers?

By surprising them!

People like getting things for free. They like them, even more, when they are viewed as ‘favors.’

But even more, they love receiving these favors as surprises.

For instance, did you know that Zappos automatically upgrades all purchases to priority shipping?

This is without so much as even a mention on the sales or checkout page.

Why give away this sort of benefit without mentioning it?

Simple … a company like Zappos recognizes the benefits of surprising people with a next day delivery.

That’s not even mentioning the fact that this shipping creates immense goodwill between Zappos and their first-time buyers. (I still remember my first order.)

Here another great example of how Zappos uses the element of surprise so effectively.

Note this story is told by the customer:

When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the (returned) shoes, since they hadn’t received them.

I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could.

They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself.

I was so touched. That’s not the company practice.

Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving.

It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations.

Big and lush and fragrant, I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears.

I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had to happen to me, I don’t know what is.

Those kinds of examples are justified by almost any cost and the cost hit Zappos takes by doing this is paid back multiple times over by the customer loyalty they generate from making people happy.

So … a company’s brand communicates every time it touches a customer.

To truly change an external brand, you must change the internal company culture that is so critical in delivering the brand experience.

In other words, brand and culture go hand in hand. You must align employee culture with business strategy.

Customers crave a consistent brand experience

Much like the user-friendly and intuitive interface enjoyed on Apple devices, the clean Apple Store design makes the space easy for consumers to navigate and find what they need.

From the employee enthusiasm that welcomes you into a store to innovations like geek chic gadgetry, all of these factors work in unison. They are all geared to deliver a brand-consumer experience.

The ultimate lesson here is simple. Invest in quality internal communications and inspired brand training for your teams.

Your employees are the advocates who keep the brand promises. These promises deliver the consumer experience a brand needs to thrive.

Take advantage of what your competition forgets.

Repeat after me: “culture and brand go hand in hand.”

Customer personalization

Explore the use of customer personalization to create WOW from your customers to create a stronger market branding.

Have you ever used customer personalization to improve the experiences your customers receive from your business?

If so, have you noticed its impact on your market branding? The process of personalization is amazingly powerful.

In a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, researchers tested the effects that mints had a control group (where no mints were given) to measure their effectiveness in increasing tips.

Think of tips as a measure of great customer experience.

The results were surprising, to say the least:

  • The first group studied had waiters giving mints along with the check, making no mention of the mints themselves. This increased tips by around 3% against the control group.
  • The second group had waiters bring out two mints by hand (separate from the check), and they mentioned them to the table (i.e., ‘Would anyone like some mints before they leave?’). This saw tips increase by about 14% against the control group.
  • The last group had waiters bring out the check first along with a few mints. A short time afterward, the waiters came back with another set of mints and let customers know they had brought out more mints, in case they wanted another.

That last group is where waiters saw a 21% increase in tips … They still were bringing out only two mints.

The researchers found that it was the perceived personalization of bringing out the second set of mints and mentioning it to customers (Hey, I thought I might see if all of you are satisfied or if someone could use an extra mint.) that made the difference.

It wasn’t the mints; it was the personalized experience that they created. It made it clear to customers that the waiter was thinking of them.

Be sure to incorporate this into your offering.

How can you follow up with customers in a personalized manner with free support, training, or reward for trying out your product or service?

The power of personalization is not only important in helping you understand how to create repeat customers.

It is also how to keep your customers incredibly satisfied and supportive of your business market branding offering.

what is branding strategy
What is branding strategy

Branding in marketing … brand personality

  
A brand personality is a set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand name. It is something to which the consumer can relate. An effective brand will increase its brand equity by having a consistent set of traits. This is the added-value that a brand gains, aside from its functional benefits. 
  

The truth is many companies fail to recognize the importance of creating brand experiences through brand personality.

They bog down their online persona with boring corporate speak and industry jargon.

Or, they blow it by not keeping the experience consistent, ultimately confusing customers or making them feel as if something is amiss with the company.

Branding with visuals

Like creating music, creating a visual brand is subjective, highly dependent on personal aesthetics and goals.

Just as I am not a music producer, but I know good music when I hear it. I am not a visual artist, but I know good design when I see it.

As a long-time professional corporate marketer, unfortunately, I know all-too-well the importance of a well-executed, consistent visual brand.

I was spoiled. In the past, I worked with agencies and their “creatives” on logos, colors, and overall visual branding.

We focused our visual branding on the tagline and visual logo.

These would represent the product on the box and printed marketing materials and giveaway product-related merchandise. Merchandise such as T-shirts, pens, and golf balls.

For any business, a brand is much more than just visuals. The visual elements are so important in marketing. Why?

  • Human beings are highly visual, and neuroscience tells us an image is more quickly recognizable than text.
  • Now more than ever, in this age of social media, visual content is king. It’s a critical element of any brand’s online presence.
  • An image expresses much about your genre and what you want to convey.

Building a branding strategy

Stop interrupting what people are interested in, and be what people are interested in.

Your marketing plan must include a branding strategy. This is how you’ll apply your brand strategically throughout marketing over time. At its core, a good branding strategy lists the one or two most important elements of your product or service, describes your company’s ultimate purpose in the world, and defines your target customer. The result is a blueprint for what’s most important to your customer.

Don’t worry. Creating a branding strategy isn’t nearly as difficult as it sounds. It builds on what we have described so far. Here’s how:

Know your target customer

As in every marketing process, you must be in the know about your target customer.

You’ve probably already gathered demographic information about the market you’re entering. But you need to think about the actual customers who will walk through your door.

Who is this person, and what is the one thing he or she ultimately wants from your product or service?

After all, the customer is buying it for a reason. What will your customer need from you?

What will you stand for?

How will you show customers every day what you’re all about?

A lot of small companies write mission statements that say the company will “value” customers and strive for “excellent customer service.”

Unfortunately, these words are all talk and no action.

Dig deeper and think about how you’ll fulfill your brand’s promise and provide value and service to the people you serve.

If you promise quick service, for example, what will “quick” mean inside your company?

And how will you make sure service stays speedy?

Along the way, you’re laying the foundation of your hiring strategy and how future employees will be expected to interact with customers.

Differentiate and position your brand

Before embarking on brand building, you have to take the time to differentiate it so that you can attract attention and stand out from competitors.

To differentiate your brand, you have to create a unique advantage in the mind of consumers. Advantage not merely by getting attention in brand building colors or logos or other superficial elements.

Think about the intangible qualities of your product or service, using adjectives from “friendly” to “fast” and every word in between.

Your goal is to own a position in the customer’s mind, so they think of you differently from the competition. Which word will your company own?

Once you come up with a unique value proposition, you should use a good branding strategy. One that will position your brand to help consumers see the greater value of your brand over competing ones in the market.

A new hair salon might focus on the adjective “convenient” and stay open a few hours later in the evening.

How will you be different from the competition? The answers are valuable assets that constitute the basis of your brand.

Personalize your brand

If you want your brand building campaign or brand to be successful, then you have to personalize it.

Let consumers see and experience the personality of your brand in its entirety. Look at your brand as something that a consumer wants to identify with as they would with their favorite cars, cell phones, or computers.

As you engage in brand building, you should also invite customers to be co-creators of brand values. You want them to feel that they also own it and relate to it.

When you personalize your brand, you give consumers a reason to participate and engage with your brand for a lifetime.

Be consistent

Now that you have decided your key brand attributes make sure it is clear and understood through all your communications — especially inside your company.

Don’t talk about things that don’t relate to or enhance your brand.

Added a new photo to social media? What does it mean for your company?

Does it align with your message, or was it just something funny that would, frankly, confuse your audience?

If it doesn’t tie back to your brand’s message, why do it?

Connect emotionally

Customers can either think rationally about your product or service, or they can think emotionally about it.

How else do you explain the person who paid thousands of dollars more for a Harley rather than buying another cheaper, equally well-made bike?

There was an emotional voice in there somewhere, whispering “Buy a Harley…open road…tough.” It’s the way the brand makes you feel.

You feel like you’re part of a larger group that’s more tight-knit than just a bunch of motorcycle riders.

Where do you think HOG came from? Harley Owners Group.

Reward and cultivate

If you already have people that love you, your company, and your brand, don’t just sit there!

Reward them for that love. These customers have gone out their way to write about you, to tell their friends about you, and to act as your brand ambassadors.

Be flexible

In this fast-changing world, marketers must remain flexible to stay relevant. On the plus side, this frees you to be creative with your campaigns.

Old Spice generated quite the buzz because it took its old brand and made it relatable to a new generation.

Old Spice still held true to its brand; they just did it in a different, buzz-worthy way that opened them to a new customer market. I’m still talking about them, and that horse left the barn long ago.

So if your old tactics aren’t working anymore, don’t be afraid to change them just because it worked in the past.

Take the opportunity to engage your followers in fresh, new ways. Are there some out-of-the-box partnerships your brand can make?

Are there attributes about your product you never highlighted? Use those to connect with new customers and remind your old ones why they love you.

Review your brand

Your brand is not static; it will go through a range of motions in its lifetime. Depending on your brand strategies, your brand will either grow in strength, or remain dormant, or recede with time.

In the brand cycle, new events, changes, and circumstances bring challenges and opportunities to enhance the value of your brand or re-establish it.

As your brand name grows, so do the responsibilities and expectations to continue with brand building.

The best way of ensuring brand growth is reviewing your activities and evaluating your successes through metrics such as levels of brand awareness and levels of engagements.

Regular reviews will help you seize and exploit new opportunities while upholding your commitment to remain true to your vision and brand strategy.

It will also help you steer your brand in the right direction and keep it relevant as you move into the future.

The bottom line

So you see it’s not about what you think that makes the brand. It is what consumers think and feels about you.

And people will form opinions about your business whether you want them to or not. So it is critical to take explicit branding actions to influence these opinions.

It is an essential component of your marketing foundation.

Ideas image.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Do you have a lesson about making your brand marketing better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on FacebookTwitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

More reading on brands and branding from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

6 Favorite Brands and Why I Like Them So Much

Brand Management … 12 Ways to Humanize the Brand to Build Trust

Walmart E-commerce Strategy … 6 Reasons Why It Won’t Beat Amazon

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on  FacebookTwitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

Anita Campbell Growth Questions Businesses Need to Ask

ave you defined a business growth strategy? Is it a continuous process as your company tries to keep up with business change? You would be surprised how many of our clients say they are happy with their size and therefore don’t have a growth strategy. In this blog, we share some Anita Campbell growth questions that can stimulate your thinking.

Anita Campbell growth questions
Anita Campbell growth questions.

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
Peter Drucker
In the life of a business, there are only two options … you can either keep up or surpass your competitors through a business growth strategy or lose market share.
Business growth obviously can be planned in various degrees. If your business is at the size you desire, a minimum or status quo strategy may be the best for you. In any case, you need to execute some form of a growth strategy to at least maintain the status quo.
How often do you review your small business growth plan or strategy? In the life of a business, there are only two options … you can either keep up or surpass your competitors by business growth planning or lose market share. Are putting enough focus or getting ready as Henry Ford says?
Business growth obviously can be planned in various degrees. If your business is at the size you desire, a minimum or status quo strategy may be the best for you. In any case, you need to execute some form of a growth strategy.
In a time of overwhelming competition, the increasing rate of marketplace change, and significant marketing message noise and clutter, even maintaining your current customer base is difficult … and real growth even harder. We define growth capabilities as composed of four key components. These are customer focus, creative marketing, adaptation and innovation, and your team.
Related: Define a Competitive Business Growth Strategy like In-N-Out Burger
Here are some ideas and questions to help you frame your thinking to define your growth strategy:

Anita Campbell growth questions … customer focus

customer focus
Customer focus priority.

Build customer relationships and trust  

Customers choose businesses based on their confidence, strength of relationships, and trust.
Today there are many communication channels to engage your customers, build communities, display your brand’s values, deliver on your promises and ultimately build relationships and trust.
Every customer touchpoint in each channel is an important marketing opportunity.

 

Customer-centric

Do you know who your customers are and your most valuable customer segments? Do you engage your customers to build your relationship and to gain valuable insights? Do you frequently rethink the question of potential new customer segments?

 

Take nothing for granted

Don’t take a customer’s loyalty for granted, especially when dealing with a first-time buyer. The key to customer loyalty is not just by providing a quality service or product, but how you service and support it.
Meeting customer expectations in a first sale may not be enough. First-time buyers want to know you care.  For loyalty to endure, it must be noticed and acknowledged.

  

Delivery channels

Are you considering ways to broaden your reach to more customers and improve your customer service by adding a new delivery channel? If so, are you thinking about how to integrate the customer experience across the channels effectively?

  

 

Anita Campbell growth questions … creative marketing

 

Integrated marketing strategy

Creating marketing messages that will be heard, remembered, and, most important, talked about, is very difficult in a world where customers have precious little time to listen.
Achieving creativity in your marketing messages delivery is essential to winning your customers’ choices, and then their loyalty.

 

Remarkable growth lessons … marketing initiatives

Are you adding new, collaborative ways to communicate with your customers? Do you consistently refresh your value proposition to ensure your discrimination is still valued, deliverable, and believable to customers?

Business Information: How to Completely Change Your Success Priorities

 

Anita Campbell growth questions … adaptation and innovation

 

Adaptability

 The digital and network revolutions have unleashed rapid and significant marketplace changes that impact your ability to engage customers, and the rate and amount of change are accelerating.
Businesses must interpret and understand the implications of these changes and rapidly respond to creative ideas and innovations to maintain their competitive edge.

 

Learn from key competitors

Do you frequently observe what your key competitors are doing in the market space? Have they spotted a key trend that you have missed? What changes are they making to their merchandising and their value proposition?

 

 Observing trends

Are you sensitive to the changes in your customer segments and to developing market trends? Do you consider how you might capitalize on these trends?
Do you frequently observe what your key competitors are doing in the market space? Have they spotted a key trend that you have missed? What changes are they making to their merchandising and their value proposition?

 

 

New white space opportunities

Do you combine your customer insights with your competitor and trend observations to derive new white space opportunities? Do you innovate on your business model and your product and services? Have you considered collaborating with local businesses and your customers?

 

 

Anita Campbell growth questions … your team

Building an effective team

your team
Know your team.

Your team is your business, quite literally. It is only as good as the weakest link and your ability to provide strong and effective leadership.
You, as a business leader, must be a talent hound for future hiring, be a strong mentor and coach, and continually work to build your leadership skills and a staff that works effectively as a team.

 

 

Takeaways

 

As a business, you can either grow or shrink … where is your small business growth focus?
Are you satisfied with your progress? Do you have a growth story to share?
Lots of ideas on business growth here that can be easily replicated … which ones do you feel could benefit your business?
How could you improve the social media marketing campaign for your business?
There are many great business growth campaigns we can learn from. Please post your comments below, offering questions or your great examples of business growth strategies.

Customer engagement
Customer engagement improvements are worth the effort.

Need some help in finding ways to grow your customers?  Such as creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers? Or perhaps finding ways to work with other businesses?
 
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your business learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add to the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
  
Check out these additional articles on business and its performance in our library:
Retail Design …11 Ways Businesses Are Responding to the Future
7 Surprising Things to Know About the Zillow Business Model
10 Lessons for Successful Entrepreneurs You Need to Know
 
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

Business Success Enablers: 16 Mind=Blowing Facts about These

Are you happy with your business success enablers and growth? Or are you struggling to keep up with your competitors?  You would be surprised how many of our clients say they are happy with their success and size and therefore don’t have a growth or success strategy for remarkable business success. To exploit change as an opportunity, like Peter Drucker would say?
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
–      Peter Drucker
Related: Peter Drucker’s Crash Course with These Management Lessons
Remember this: whatever got you where you are today will not be sufficient to keep you there. A rapidly changing environment is the regular background against which organizations must develop. We can all dream about what it takes to make our startup a success.  Dreams are important, but not without a success plan and its execution.

business success enablers
Business success enablers.

As an entrepreneur, I’ve long been fascinated by the forces that drive business success.  It’s been 5 years since I founded Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing agency that focuses on helping to improve business success. In interacting with will be entrepreneurs,  start-up business owners, or small businesses, I have noted that it is not too uncommon for them to want to spend lots of valuable time and energy thinking about appearance rather than spend their time demonstrating that they can win new customers, and more importantly, keep them.
Here are the top five most important success factors to a winning business that we use most often with our clients (listed in order of importance):

Business success enablers … your people are your business 

Your team is your business, quite literally. It is only as good as the weakest link and your ability to provide strong and effective leadership.
You, as a business leader, must be a talent hound for future hiring, be a strong mentor and coach for people development, continually work to build your leadership skills, and build and maintain a staff that collaborates effectively as a team.
Digital Spark Marketing offers workshops and useful blogs in all of these areas.
  

Start with customer focus  

key enablers for business growth
Key enablers for business growth.

Collecting and employing customer insights

We are definitely in the age of the customer … ignore this at the peril of your business. While the customer is not always right, he always has the right to choose. Building customers into advocates is perhaps your most important task. It all starts by listening to your customers.

 

Do you listen more than you talk?

Do you know who your most important customers are? Your influencers? And why they come back to do business with you? These are important questions whose answers provide valuable insights to your business.

 

Examples of business enablers … engage customers  

engage customers
Engage customers.

Why engage customers? The answer is pretty simple. Customers remember and value personal experiences that demonstrate deep understanding and respect for their needs. There is a fine line between a bad, good, and great customer experience. You need to know your customers and understand your touchpoints well to build great customer experiences. Great customers experiences are the foundation for great customer service … both are essential in building advocates and influencers.
Smile, listen, connect, and thanks = engage customers

 

DSM Marketing Agency is skilled in understanding and improving customer touchpoints in ways that make positive impacts on customer experience and service. Our goal is to make your customer experience and service discriminate your business from its competitors.
Do you need the ‘spark’ to set your business apart … if so, call for a free consultation today.

 

Responsive customer service

Businesses need to take their customer service to the next level. The best approaches are by being more responsive and proactive, delivering on their promises, and listening and observing to gain insights and then acting on them.
The ability for a business to serve its customers in a responsive way that is consistent with meeting or beating their expectations will prove to be the ultimate differentiator separating the winners from the losers.
Be social, yes, but above all, be responsive.
When companies learn how to deliver and evolve differentiated customer service, they build strong, enduring customer relationships and trust.
Does your business strive to create world-class customer service? DSM Agency can help you build your roadmap.
 

Building customer relationships and trust

Few things as critical as building customer relationships.
Customers choose businesses based on their confidence, strength of relationships, and trust.
Today there are many communication channels to engage your customers, build communities, display your brand’s values, deliver on your promises and building customer relationships and trust. Use those that represent where the majority of your target customers reside.

 

Creative marketing

Creating an integrated marketing strategy and messages that will be heard, remembered, and, most important, talked about, is very difficult in a world where customers have precious little time to listen.   Achieving creativity in your marketing messages delivery is essential to winning your customers choices, and then their loyalty.
The DSM Agency will collaborate with you and your team to design winning marketing campaigns to effectively deliver your messages.

  

Creative marketing messages

Your job as a business entrepreneur is to establish your expertise with your target customers … both on-line and off-line. You must know more than your customer communities know and use this knowledge to help them in their decision making. Use creative messaging to achieve these goals

  

Winning value propositions

With the amount of competition in the marketplace and the number of choices a consumer is given, the creation of a winning value proposition is difficult … but all the more necessary.
How does your business make a difference to customers who have infinite choice?   The DSM Agency has been building successful discrimination and value propositions for the past several decades … we will be happy to collaborate with you on yours.

Brand marketing

Give your advocates and influencers good things to talk about. Focus on the advocates and influencers and let them take your messages to their friends and do your market branding for you. Everyone who touches a customer has a role to play in positively influencing a customer and strengthening your brand … so it’s their job to deliver the right kinds of communications and influence.

 

Social media and word of mouth campaigns

A community is a social network of people who interact amongst themselves about a specific topic. An audience is people who interact with a service. You can buy an audience, but you can’t buy a community. Focus on building communities through your use of integrated social media. We have many excellent examples we can discuss with you … it starts with a simple call.
There are many new components of a successful marketing campaign … such as social and mobile, and many more channels created by social media. The world of marketing is in a constant state of change, growing more personal, dynamic and local.
Is your business ready for the world of real time marketing? It is certainly an area that requires your attention. Let us discuss some of our ideas with you.
  

Integrated marketing campaigns

Marketing campaigns are not one dimensional. You have many customers, lots of messages, and several value propositions. You engage customers wherever they are … and they are on many channels. A campaign must effectively integrate your messages, their delivery and timing in a way that optimizes your ability to engage and not bombard your customers.

 

Innovation

What do you think: are innovators born or made?  Surely, those who spawn ideas that change the world are special – different than the rest of us. Take one look at an Einstein, a Steve Jobs or a Da Vinci and it seems that they were bequeathed with something unique.
But are we looking in the right direction? I believe the biggest secret of innovation is that anyone can do it. The reason is simple: It’s just not that hard. Look up the word “innovate” in any dictionary and see what it actually means, instead of what you think it means. You’ll find something like this:
 
To innovate is to introduce something new.
That’s it. It doesn’t say you need to be a creative genius, or a workaholic. It’s just three little words: introduce something new.
The key word in the definition is “new.” The common trap about newness is the assumption that new means something the universe has never seen before. This turns out to be a very bad assumption.
Here’s why I conclude this: name any great innovator and I guarantee they borrowed and reused ideas from the past to make whatever it is they are famous for.
  

Innovation principles and process

Companies often ask themselves why their innovation principles seem to produce so few truly game-changing ideas. Why are they mostly getting only lukewarm suggestions for incremental improvements rather than radical new concepts for revolutionizing their industries? How can an organization get dramatically better at generating big, breakthrough ideas?
What are missing in most companies are innovation principles that translate ideas into winning ideas.

Crowdsourcing

Does your company do crowdsourcing in any form?  Have you done any recent reading or research on crowdsourcing design? We follow this topic quite closely and have written several blogs on the topic and the businesses that employ it.
Crowdsourcing design is not just for new entrants challenging established players; the latter can also leverage crowdsourcing to their advantage, enabling users to design new products and test the demand at the same time.

Times of marketplace change

In a time of overwhelming competition, increasing rate of marketplace change, and significant marketing message noise and clutter, even maintaining your current customer base is difficult … and real growth even harder. Digital Spark Marketing Agency defines growth capabilities, as shown below, and provides services in each area. We add value in problem understanding, marketing campaign design, designing changes for market trends, and team training.

 

 Adaptability to change

The digital and network revolutions have unleashed rapid and significant marketplace changes that impact your ability to engage customers … and the rate and amount of change is accelerating. Businesses must interpret and understand the implications of these changes and rapidly respond with creative ideas and innovations to maintain their competitive edge.
The survivor is the one most adaptable to change

social_media_ideas 

Need some help in finding ways to grow your customers?  Such as creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers? Or perhaps finding ways to work with other businesses?
 
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your business learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
 
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on customer experience from our Library:
Client Satisfaction …10 Secrets to Improve Customer Experience
Customer Orientation … the Worst Customer Experience Mistakes
Customer Experience Optimization … 10 Employee Actions that Lower It
Building a Customer Experience Strategy for Business Success
Random Acts of Kindness for Customer Experience Improvements
10 Ways to Employ Customer Experience for Influence
  
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.