Archives for March 2017
Branding Series: The Difference Between Branding and Marketing
Many small business owners or people new to the ideas of marketing and branding use the two words interchangeably. This is a common mistake, but branding and marketing are actually two quite different tasks, each of which has their own purpose.
As we begin a new series about branding your business, it is important we begin by clearing the air about the confusion between the terms âbrandingâ and âmarketing,â and what the primary differences are.
Marketing is an action; branding is a strategy
The primary difference to remember between the two is that marketing involves more of a push than branding. Marketing is the active promotion of a service or product. To oversimplify things a bit, marketing essentially involves you reaching out to your customers and telling them exactly why they should buy what youâre selling.
Branding is what comes before any marketing efforts you engage in. It involves expressions of the values of your organization or service. An organization focused on branding is communicating all of the attributes, values and characteristics that define that organization. A brand image helps encourage people to buy a product, but it is not a means in and of itself of reaching out to customers to convince them. Rather than a push tactic, it is more of a pull, drawing customers in based on image and reputation.
The tactics you use in your marketing campaigns could contribute to your brand image, but ultimately your brand is much bigger than any individual marketing effort you perform. It is much more consistent and longer lasting. Marketing campaigns may last a few months, but a brand is something you build up over the course of time and hope to sustain for years. Your goal with your brand is to have it stick in the minds of your customers to the point where they associate your company with certain ideas, traits and values.
For example: if people assume your company is reliable, then that is a key element of your brand that you have likely built up through years of hard work and intuitive branding.
Marketing creates new buyers; branding creates loyal customers
Another key difference between marketing and branding is the kinds of customers they create. The primary goal of marketing is to reach out to new audiences and turn them into buyers. The strategies used to accomplish this can vary widely, but that is always the goal of any marketing campaign. Marketing is very much a sales-driven endeavor.
Branding, however, is more about creating loyalty among customers. Thereâs a big difference between convincing someone to come and buy once and convincing someone to not only come back multiple times, but to actually become an advocate for your company. Have you ever recommended a particular business to a friend? Even if you did not explicitly think of it in these terms, you did so because you bought into that companyâs brand, at least in some regard.
Your ability to brand your company is just as important to the success of your organization as being financially stable, having a strong strategic plan and vision for the future, and having an outstanding team of employees.
Over the next few weeks, we will discuss branding in greater detail, including best practices, mistakes and misconceptions and more. But for now, remember this: marketing and branding are not the same. Each requires a different skill set and is performed for a different purpose. Both are important, but only one produces loyal customers who advocate for your company.
Copyright 2017 Viral Solutions LLC
Prior to joining Viral Solutions, Christine held executive leadership roles at some of the largest small business consulting firms in the USA. Her experience includes leading direct reports of over 130 remote sales agents who generated $38mm in annual revenue. She obtained her Marketing degree from British Columbia Institute of Technology. Bring her C-Suite experience to your small business. Although our company is virtual, and we can work with you wherever you are located, she is located in Denver, Colorado and owns a second home in Vancouver, BC Canada.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner and an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant.
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves, so business can be fun again.
SMO Series: Setting Up Your Social Media Profiles
Recently we kicked off a series about social media optimization (SMO), discussing what SMO is and how it has increased in importance over the last decade.
In this article we focus on the first steps of any SMO (social media optimization) campaign â getting your social media profiles set up for success.
Long before you post or share any content, you need to have set up your profile so it is easy for potential new followers to find and contains important information about your brand. Some elements of this are easy â you likely already have a logo or profile photo you can use, and should have already put work into designing a cover photo. But there are certain other aspects of setting up your profiles that could take some further consideration.
Create branded URLs for your profile that are consistent across networks
One of the first steps you will have to take when setting up a new social media account is choosing your username, which will be part of your social media pageâs URL. Whenever possible, you should keep your username consistent across every channel to enhance brand recognition and keep things simple for people who follow you across multiple platforms.
If you find your brand name is not available on a particular platform, you should still try to stay as close to it as possible while still making it easy to market and remember.
The way you customize your URL differs across platforms:
- Facebook: Navigate to the âaboutâ section of your profile and youâll see a field that says âusername.â Click it and you can easily edit it.
- Twitter: Twitter automatically creates a custom URL for your page based on the username you sign up with (@______). You are able to choose this username at any time, though for brands it is highly recommended you stick with the same username forever once youâve chosen it to avoid any confusion.
- LinkedIn: On LinkedIn, it is best to set your company name as the username for a Business Page. The network creates URLs in the form of linkedin.com/company/companyname. On personal pages, you can create your own unique URL like you would on Facebook.
Complete all profile fields on your social media pages
Once you have a custom URL for your company social media profile, the next step is to actually fill out the various fields in that profile with relevant, important information.
You should complete every relevant section under the âAboutâ category, and go into as much detail as you think is necessary. Remember: the purpose of SMO is to get people to land on your social pages, so this could be the very first place prospects find your company and learn about it.
For this reason, you should think of your social media profiles as being a second website. Rather than copying and pasting content from your existing website, you should create entirely new content.
There are a couple reasons for this. First, duplicate content gets punished in search engine algorithms, so you could actually be doing more harm than good by putting that content out onto another platform. Search engines are now indexing content published on social media, so the more detailed you get (in an original way), the better.
Second, the experience you are aiming to provide on social media should be different (at least to an extent), even if the voice of the brand is the same. You may have found in your market research, for example, that the people who tend to interact with your brand on social media are of a slightly different general demographic than those who interact with your brand via email, telephone or live chat on your website. Your content should be adjusted accordingly.
In addition to providing some background about your company and what you do, you should include information on your social media page such as the services and products you offer, operating hours, locations, links to your website, ways to get in contact with your company and more.
Add calls to your action to encourage more engagement from prospects
Finally, before you begin creating and sharing content on your social media pages, you should take advantage of the call to action features many of these platforms have. Ultimately, the goal of your SMO campaign is to drive more conversions, and calls to action can help you accomplish that.
Facebook, for example, recently added a brand new call to action feature on top of the cover photo to help you create more engagement among your audience.
You can also write calls to action into your profile content under the âaboutâ sections.
As you kick off your SMO campaign, make sure you put plenty of time into setting up your profile so you are preparing yourself for success rather than making the process harder on yourself than it needs to be.
Copyright Viral Solutions 2017
Marisa Fritzemeier
Angel of Innovative Artistry and Design for Viral Solutions LLC
SMO Series: Attracting More Attention When Sharing Links to Original or Curated Content
As we continue to discuss the importance of a robust social media optimization (SMO) campaign and the best practices for implementing one, we turn our attention to the actual content you are posting and sharing.
You have likely heard the phrase âcontent is kingâ regarding digital marketing and search engine optimization. This is just as true for social media profiles as it is for websites and blogs.
You simply will not be able to succeed with your social media marketing if you are not creating and/or sharing high-quality content.
The two types of content
Typically, your social media profiles will have a good mix of the two types of social media content: original content and curated content.
Original content is, as the name suggests, content you have created yourself specifically for use on social media. This content is usually part of a strategic social media marketing campaign you have already discussed with your company, using company hashtags or linking to other content that fits within that campaign.
Curated content is content you have shared from other sources across the internet. A good content curation strategy involves more than just tweeting out or sharing links. Any content you share should be relevant and interesting to your audience. You should be just as focused on the quality of the content you share as the quality of the content you create. Any content you share reflects on your brand in that you thought it interesting or informative, so you want your audience to know you have discerning, trustworthy taste.
With each type of content, you can determine what your audience finds most relevant or interesting by the amount of engagement those posts get. Pay attention to retweets, shares, favorites, likes comments and other metrics, and see if you can spot trends in terms of which types of content drive the most engagement.
Fine-tuning your post headlines
Whenever you send out a Facebook post or Tweet, you should avoid using the exact same headline thatâs listed along with the link. For example, if you are posting a link to your most recent blog, the copy of the tweet or Facebook post should not simply be the headline of the blog post. You should instead come up with a different tagline, or a summary of whatâs included in that blog post.
Another great strategy for blogs in particular can be to come up with two headlines for every blog post you create. One of them can be the title of the post as published on the blog, and the other can be the headline you use when sharing the blog on your social media accounts.
Use images when sharing content
Another way to get more attention with your original or curated links is to include an image along with every link you send out. Numerous studies have found that images are the form of content that draws the most engagement across platforms, which makes them an extremely important strategy for optimizing any type of content you share on social media.
You should use high-quality images along with your links whenever possible. Typically when you paste a link into your status updater, an image that shows up on the webpage you are linking to will be displayed on your Facebook or Twitter along with the link. On Facebook, you can also remove this suggested image and upload one of your own. But to make this easier, you should include a featured image on all of your blog posts, which will automatically show up whenever the post is shared.
Regardless of how you get the image to be displayed, you should always make sure that it is a high-quality, high-resolution image. Having images that are overly fuzzy or pixelated, or are simply low-quality compositions, will not do anything to get people more interested in clicking on the link you share.
Use these strategies to better optimize the links you share on social media. Next week, we discuss one of the key tools associated with social media optimization: the hashtag.
Copyright Viral Solutions 2017
Marisa Fritzemeier
Angel of Innovative Artistry and Design for Viral Solutions LLC
Conversion Funnel Mastery Course | Learn how to make profitable campaigns
A conversion funnel allows businesses to completely automate the customer acquisition process. As a Certified Customer Value Optimization Specialist, youÂll learn how to architect a Âconversion funnel that gives businesses exactly what they want. In the program, you will learn how to develop the most profitable customer-getting campaign youâve ever created! This course contains some of the most valuable information a marketer can have.
While there are many businesses that use some type of funnel to generate and convert leads, few of them have put in the time and effort needed to fully optimize that funnel.
The Conversion Funnel Mastery class is an advanced, 6 module, 56 lesson online course. At the end of each module you will be asked to take a short quiz prior to moving on to the next module. Once you have completed the entire course, you can then sit for the final certification exam, and after passing this exam you will earn the “Certified Customer Value Optimization Specialist ” designation, complete with displayable badge and printable certificate (suitable for framing).
This optimization leads to bringing in more valuable customers who are less expensive to acquire.
Ultimately, the ability to regularly generate new leads and convert them into customers is the most valuable skill any marketer can have. This course helps people to acquire and hone that skill, turning them into unstoppable marketing machines.
Here are a few of the things you will learn when taking the Conversion Funnel Mastery course:
- Using the âFive Thingsâ methodology to optimize all of your existing marketing funnels
- What you can change to your funnels to help you instantly get more leads, subscribers and customers
- Examples of tweaks Digital Marketer has performed for other clients, including one that resulted in a 2000 percent increase in leads
- How to develop a âStatement of Valueâ that perfectly positions your product or service
- The most common types of doubt experienced by customers, and how you can boost conversions among even customers experiencing those doubts
- Three little words you can add on to conversion funnels that lead to an average bump in profit per customer of 200 percent
- How you can use coupons and discounts in funnels for both online and offline businesses
- How to develop a five-phase follow up system that converts more of your leads into buyers and keeps your buyers coming back for more
Viral Solutions is a platinum certified partner and provider of Digital Marketer courses, including its popular Conversion Funnel Mastery course. Contact us today at Viral Solutions for more information about how you can enroll in the program and the types of benefits you can expect it to have for your business.
Thomas von Ahn
Chief Elephant Slayer for Viral Solutions LLC
“Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful
men and women keep moving. They make mistakes but they
donât quit.” — Conrad Hilton
Let's Chat! Set up an appointment with me HERE.
Conversion Funnel Mastery Course | Learn how to make profitable campaigns
A conversion funnel allows businesses to completely automate the customer acquisition process. As a Certified Customer Value Optimization Specialist, youÂll learn how to architect a Âconversion funnel that gives businesses exactly what they want. In the program, you will learn how to develop the most profitable customer-getting campaign youâve ever created! This course contains some of the most valuable information a marketer can have.
While there are many businesses that use some type of funnel to generate and convert leads, few of them have put in the time and effort needed to fully optimize that funnel.
The Conversion Funnel Mastery class is an advanced, 6 module, 56 lesson online course. At the end of each module you will be asked to take a short quiz prior to moving on to the next module. Once you have completed the entire course, you can then sit for the final certification exam, and after passing this exam you will earn the “Certified Customer Value Optimization Specialist ” designation, complete with displayable badge and printable certificate (suitable for framing).
This optimization leads to bringing in more valuable customers who are less expensive to acquire.
Ultimately, the ability to regularly generate new leads and convert them into customers is the most valuable skill any marketer can have. This course helps people to acquire and hone that skill, turning them into unstoppable marketing machines.
Here are a few of the things you will learn when taking the Conversion Funnel Mastery course:
- Using the âFive Thingsâ methodology to optimize all of your existing marketing funnels
- What you can change to your funnels to help you instantly get more leads, subscribers and customers
- Examples of tweaks Digital Marketer has performed for other clients, including one that resulted in a 2000 percent increase in leads
- How to develop a âStatement of Valueâ that perfectly positions your product or service
- The most common types of doubt experienced by customers, and how you can boost conversions among even customers experiencing those doubts
- Three little words you can add on to conversion funnels that lead to an average bump in profit per customer of 200 percent
- How you can use coupons and discounts in funnels for both online and offline businesses
- How to develop a five-phase follow up system that converts more of your leads into buyers and keeps your buyers coming back for more
Viral Solutions is a platinum certified partner and provider of Digital Marketer courses, including its popular Conversion Funnel Mastery course. Contact us today at Viral Solutions for more information about how you can enroll in the program and the types of benefits you can expect it to have for your business.
Thomas von Ahn
Chief Elephant Slayer for Viral Solutions LLC
“Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful
men and women keep moving. They make mistakes but they
donât quit.” — Conrad Hilton
Let's Chat! Set up an appointment with me HERE.