More important than an image that comes to mind when one thinks of McDonalds, Nike, or Coke, is the gut feeling they get.  This gut feeling is powerful because people first make decisions with there gut and then justify them their mind. When enough people come to the same gut feeling about your company, product, or service you have achieved “brand”

The same principle for large popular brands apply to small businesses — the cumulative effect of customer interactions with the company, product, or service results in brand.

These interactions are known as touch points and can include your store or place of business, company vehicles, uniforms or clothes, packaging, print materials, human interactions with customer service or salespeople, online experiences, YouTube videos, photos, reviews,  word-of-mouth social discussion, advertising, and more.

Some of these touch points you control directly but others you only have indirect influence over.  You don’t control what your customer tells their best friend but you can certainly influence it by delivering an experience that expresses your company’s values and delivers on your brand promise.

Defining and guiding your brand

Creating brand doesn’t have to be expensive.  Here are some tips to get going in the right direction:

1. Get clear about your values as a company and let your customers know about these (but don’t preach) – are you dedicated to environment, community oriented, offering only top quality, etc.
2. Know who your target customers groups are and what kind of experience they’re looking for – a teen is looking for a different experience then their mom, you may need to influence both of these target groups.  Ask yourself how can you deliver a favorable experience to them both?
3. Craft the experience that you want to give your targets – think about what you want your customers to feel when they experience your business, product, or service an deliver “experiences” that generate this “feeling”.
4. Differentiate the experience of your brand or product from that of your competitors – If you are not #1 or #2 in your category, create a new category by delivering products and experiences that lead to a perception that is typically not associated with the category, and define the product in new terms not associated with the “competitive” category.
5. Deliver the “differentiated” experience at each touch point.

A simple method to measure your brand – the “Mueller Method”

A simple way to check how you are doing is to ask you customers at the end of every face to face or online interaction to write down the first three words that come to mind when they think about there experience today.  Let them know it is anonymous and to be as honest as possible.  Make it easy for them.  Always have pen and paper, or a quick online form that the customer can fill out at the end of each in person or online interaction.  Give a random thank you gift, or discount that they could use on their next visit for filling out the form.  Alternatively just ask and jot the words down yourself.

For a simple analysis, sort these words into 3 categories:

1. Consistent with Brand aspirations
2. Inconsistent with Brand aspirations
3. Neutral

Add up the numbers in each category and create percentages from them.  Plot the numbers on a graph and look for trends.  Also plot on the graph any changes to the way you deliver you experiences and look for correlations to how they affect the gut feeling of your customers.

The simple act of asking your customers this questions tells them that they are important and that you care about what they think.  This too affects their gut feeling about you.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think about this, have you had success with similar efforts, do you have ideas on how to improve on this?

Happy Marketing.

Yesterday, a prospective client called.  He was having difficulty convincing his company management to budget for social media, and he posed an excellent question to me: Why should a successful established niche B2B company spend time, money and resources on social media?

Social Media is not an Island

I think the answer lies in understanding that social media is not distinct from other online marketing efforts; it is really part of the same effort, one of the many levers that could be pulled to reach strategic objectives.  It is just one part of a smart integrated marketing strategy.  While SEO is used to drive traffic to your website, and advertising is used to build awareness, social media works in concert with all the others efforts and aims to get more people to talk more frequently in more places about your products, services, and company, with the goal of selling more products, more frequently, and at higher margins.

From what my client told me, they had been able to generate excellent word of mouth referrals and that has been a great source of sales leads. This is awesome and I suspect the same business qualities that have enabled them to generate this word of mouth, could be extended online.

Over the past few years, there has been a dramatic increase in both the quantity and quality of online social interactions.  Facebook just hit 350 million users.  Millions of people write nearly 6 million tweets per day, and YouTube streams more than one billion videos in a day.  People are commenting, social bookmarking, sharing and socializing online, both personally and professionally.  So, the obvious question is: how could they extend what was successful in face-to-face interactions to the social realm of the Internet.

Start with SEO

After a cursory examination of their website, it was clear that they should start with SEO.  This became obvious after I did a Google search for the keywords they used in their metadata and on their site and did not find their site after looking six pages deep in the Google search results.  Ideally, they want to show up on the first page, hopefully near the top.

If you haven’t yet optimized for search STOP everything else and go do this NOW! It is absolutely crucial for you to figure out what your customers type into the Google search bar when they have the problem that your company solves!  You need to know exactly what they type; these are the keywords that you should use in the copy of your website, as well as in the metadata.  The Google keyword tool can help you figure this out.  If you don’t know how to use this tool call me (831) 239-6745 and I will help.  Doing this will make it much easier for your future customers to find you, and more likely that they find you before they find your competition. You can work in your differentiation points around the keywords.  SEO is key, and if you have a website that’s not optimized for search, a huge part of the benefit of having a website is being wasted and sales are being lost. Social media can be great to make people aware of who you are and SEO can help them easily find you when they need you.

How to use Social Media to improve SEO

Not only will social efforts reach and influence people directly, they will improve search ranking.  The more your site is linked to by other sites, the higher it will place in Google results, especially if the linked text is the same as your keywords and if the links come from well respected high traffic or academic websites.  Another factor that influences page rank is the “freshness” of your site; a measure of how current the information is and when it was last updated, as well as, the frequency of updates.  A blog can help with this.  If you specialize in shipping expensive equipment, write the definitive guide to doing so and post it on your blog, comment about it in forums, etc.  Create a slide deck about it and post it on Slideshare, maybe even share videos about it on YouTube, as well as on your site, and have everything linked back to the appropriate page on your site.  Find out where the conversations are already happening.  Look at blogs, forums, social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Linked In, for discussions of  topics of your expertise and participate.  You can find these conversations by setting up Google alerts for your keywords, you company name, the name of your competition, or important products or issues.  When joining a conversation, use your real name and show you company affiliation, be transparent and authentic and look to give value and do not directly try to sell; this will build credibility.  The sales will organically come both directly through these interactions and indirectly as part of the resulting brand equity and presence.  All else being equal, people do business with people they know and like.  Go build relationships, become known, be likeable and helpful.

Being Social is Not New, you know how to do this already!

Social media is a set of tools and techniques that are used to do exactly what you have been doing via traditional methods for years – getting people to be interested in and to comment about your products, services, and company.  The great thing is that when it’s done online, it can reach more people more quickly and at the right time.  Most of all, social media is storytelling – tell your story and you will differentiate yourself from your competition.  Give your customers something to relate to, something they can remember.  One key to success lies in understanding that stories are told and consumed differently on the Internet than in traditional media or in person.  They are told in snippets; a video here, a comment there and an insightful blog post – what emerges is a picture who you are, what you stand for, and why your customers rely on you. This is your brand image. You have the choice to make your website a static online catalog or a dynamic experience for your audience. One is not that much more difficult than the other. You also have the choice to embrace the social internet and create a presense that extends past the walls of your website, or go about business as usual.  The choice is yours but I tell you that your competition will sooner or later do this.  The social internet is still in its infancy and you have the opportunity to benefit from early mover advantage. When you do this, make sure that your efforts and the tactics you choose are guided by your greater marketing strategy.

How to get Help

First and foremost, whomever you choose to work with must understand your business.  Many companies struggle with social media because they rely on so called social media “experts” who know the social tools, but lack the marketing background and strategic experience to understand their prospective clients’ business and their unique challenges. Look for a consultant who listens more than they talk and who is asking salient, probing questions about you and about your business. They should be able to explain how the social web is changing the relationship between customers and companies and, in turn, how that is changing the definition of “brand” and what customers expect of brands.  They should also be able to share with you their success stories of working with other clients, both in traditional marketing and social efforts.   Make sure they walk their talk and have created an effective social media presence for themselves.  And, the last piece of advice is to work with someone you like.  Part of their job is to help you understand the world of social media and to help you build relationships, so if they’re not a good communicator and likable, it is a pretty good warning sign that they may not be the right person for you.

I would love to hear your stories and challenges, what you learned, and what I missed in this post; share your thoughts with me here or tweet me @andrewmueller.  Thanks for reading!