Branding

Branding can be elusive for a lot of businesses. What is it? How do you capture the ethos that you want to represent your company?

When you’re a micropreneur, you are your own brand. So your job becomes establishing yourself as a thought leader through content, speaking, and networking. You could write a book about your expertise or simply start guest blogging for other publications.

If you run a larger business, branding should be about connecting to your audience in a meaningful way and putting the human element back into the equation. You do this through great customer service and by paying attention to what your customers want.

The key with branding is knowing how people see your brand. If the perception of your audience is a far cry from where you want to be, it’s time to realign so that you’re being seen the way you want to be seen.

How to Market Any Event

When you think about marketing events, you probably think about conferences, seminars, or workshops. But what about job fairs? Open houses? Grand openings? Each of these events depends on having a good turnout to be successful. How do you get lots of people at your event? You market it smartly.

 

The Secret? Advanced Planning

People are busy, so for those who don’t plan events for a living, they might start planning a given event just weeks before. Don’t do that. While certainly the bulk of your promotion should be right around the event, you actually need to start months in advance, depending on the event.

Start by developing a marketing plan that includes:

  • Specific blog posts you’ll write about the event and topics related
  • Content calendar of social media updates. Get heavy in promotion in the weeks before event
  • Press release
  • Advertising

Experts Talk About Future Trends In Retail

As retailers all over the world try to come up with new ways to improve their customers’ shopping experiences, the experts have a few pointers for them. Retail Vision recently approached 40 well-known authorities in the industry to know more about what they think about future trends in retail.

While Rick Moss from the Retail Wire says that the coming years will belong to retailers who enable customers to make their own decisions, the Retail Champion’s Clare Rayner predicts a merging of all channels in the future, leading to new levels of personalization and co-creation between the retailer and the customer.

New Year’s Resolutions for Egg - 2016 Edition

I enjoy my end-of-year resolutions post. It gives me time to reflect on the past year, as well as look forward to even more great things in the next year. Last year I shortened my resolutions list significantly, and I’m happy with the results.

Year in Review: 2015 Resolutions

Here’s what I hoped to achieve a year ago, as well as results:

1. Increase repeat business by 40%.

I’m really happy to say that 90% of Egg’s revenue is from repeating customers. I think we’ve managed to impress customers with our great content skills, and they come back for more!

Why Marketing Opportunities Matter

You never know where your next customer will come from. You might strike up a conversation in the grocery store, exchange cards, and end up getting a call from someone who wants to write you a check. It might happen at a conference. A party. That’s why I am always open to marketing opportunities.

 

Recently I was interviewed on the Franchise Gator blog. I don’t receive a ton of interview requests, so I try to honor them. And I’m glad I did. The day the post went live, I received a call from someone who had read the interview. Seems he was impressed with my answers and wanted Egg’s help with content marketing.

How Digital Integration Can Contribute to a Successful Brand

When it comes to creating a brand, or expanding an established brand, nothing today is more important than a thriving digital presence. Most of the key marketing elements for business success — including customer retention, new customer acquisition and expanding the reach of revenue-generating activities — depend on a digital integration strategy that embraces the Internet’s full potential.

Yet with so many digital and media channels to choose from, how does a small business determine the most effective venue in which to pursue this strategy?

The answer lies in the effective integration of those channels and platforms to contribute to a successful brand strategy. “Integration” involves more than simply coordinating different, silo-based marketing efforts. The process, says marketing communications specialist Saman Mansourpour, “means offering tailored brand experiences at every customer touch-point, and this is what causes marketers the biggest headache.”

Bricks & Mortar Retailers: Survival of the Fittest [Infographic]

The rise in online sales has no doubt presented a big challenge for brick and mortar retailers. Retailers often see technology as being detrimental to their business, but what retailers need to realise is that they can use technology to their advantage.

Think of it this way. How often do you check reviews of products when you’re in-store on your phone? If you see that a product has good reviews you will likely buy the item immediately in-store. The average customer will not be willing to wait for a delivery unless there is a huge cost saving.  So in this instance, the retailer makes a sale thanks to the internet. Retailers should ensure that they have good wifi in stores, or they could miss out on the sale.

Another important factor is optimizing your web presence. 79% of Smartphone owners check information on local businesses on their devices, so it is important that retailers have all their important information easily accessible online.

As well as this, when a customer arrives in-store, there needs to be more on offer than just a place to buy goods, and retailers must focus on turning their store into a ‘hub’. This infographic from Store Traffic outlines why brick and mortar retailers need to use advances in technology to their advantage, because if they do not, they risk falling further behind the pack.

How NOT to Manage Your Brand: Things to Avoid for Effective Brand Management

Managing your brand is not always an easy thing. It’s like trying to wrangle an unruly pet – there are times when you think you are in control, but really, at the end of the day, you’re the one on your hands and knees cleaning up its mess. But, there are many ways you can take control of your brand and make it do what you want with effective brand management.

There are many articles and experts who tell you what you should do, but few tell you what you should NOT do. By being more aware of these pitfalls, you can avoid them, and truly push your brand forward.

How to Develop Your Brand’s Voice

With the overwhelming amount of content being produced on the web, it’s important to set your company apart. One way to do that is develop your brand’s voice that appeals to your consumers.

Developing and sticking to your brand’s voice can be difficult, especially if your copy is written by a big team and not just one person. But here are a few tips to help you uncover what your voice sounds like and how to keep is consistent.

Personalized Experiences Done Right

In marketing, “personalization” is a big buzzword right now. But it’s always been important. Just look at Ogilvy on Advertising and you’ll find the legendary ad man championing its effectiveness more than 30 years ago. The difference between then and now is how easy it is to create personalized experiences that are relevant and valuable and lead to brand preference and repurchase.

With the amount of data a marketer can capture on his or her customers, we should all be able to create individual personalized experiences that lead to a better bottom line. So why are so many companies failing?

Marketing to Millennials [Infographic]

Millennials now comprise more than half of the American workforce. For marketers, this means that Generation Y is now making money, and thus, spending money. Yet new data from Manta show that small business owners are reluctant to invest in marketing to Millennials.

Check out the information below for the full findings.

5 Ways to Build Better Social Media Communities

Social media has quickly emerged as a primary platform for engaging your customers and generating awareness about your company, products and promotions. But social media marketing is still so new that best practices quickly turn into ineffective gimmicks. The key is to start with a good community so you have a built-in audience for your products and services, regardless of the latest trend. So let’s look at five ways to build better social media communities for your small business.

The first step to any marketing channel plan is understanding its capabilities. Social media, for example, is used to build awareness, engage with a specific, targeted community and generate leads. So be sure you use this channel to promote these goals and then measure against them.

Now that you’re clear when to use social media marketing, you’ll want to build your community so you have an audience before you need it. While you should test your own theories that make the most sense to your business, these are a few best practices to get you started.

5 Elements Every About Page Must Have

One of the hardest things to do is talk about yourself. Usually, when someone asks about you in a professional setting, you rattle off your credentials and experience. You talk about where you got your degree, the companies you’ve worked with, and how you ended up in your current role. When you’re done, how does the other person respond?

In many cases, the response is lukewarm. Nothing you said is relatable. Unless you have the same alma mater, nothing is tangible to the other person in the conversation. They might be impressed but they won’t have the answer to the most important question: “What’s in it for me?”

Your about page often takes the same shape. This is your chance to talk about yourself to your website visitor so you go into credential and experience touting mode. *Yawn*. This approach is even less effective online because your website viewer can easily “walk away” from the conversation by hitting the back button.

How do you make your about page excite your reader and get her invested in your business? By incorporating these five elements:

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