by Mel Depaoli

   This article was originally published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

With the growing importance of social media, there is much talk about ‘new marketing’ or ‘branding’ in today’s times.  Although branding has many definitions, one of the most standard ones (by businessdictionary.com) is: “Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retain loyal customers”. The ultimate goal of branding is to create a consistent desired feeling or thought in the client or prospect’s mind when your company or product name is mentioned or visible. 

This leads to an interesting question.  Have the rules of branding really changed or is it simply the tactics to achieve the goal that has changed?

Prior to the growth of the Internet and particularly social media, this was achieved mainly by advertising, promotions and sponsorships which in today’s verbiage, represents “push” technology.  The message was simply one-sided, pushed out by the promoting company towards its targeted market.  Companies were able to decide who heard what message and when it was heard. However, the response from their actions was delayed since no direct response from their targeted audience was possible except (usually) in the form of some purchase at a later time.  

In today’s market, brands are often built through two-way conversations between the company and the client or prospect. Both the client and the company provide value to the brand with each action or negatively, with each inaction. To enhance their brand, the company still has a desired message it wishes to convey but now, the client has other resources and choices available, often seeking truth, additional information and value up front. It is easier for a prospect to decide the value you offer long before they ever reach out or express any interest in you. Also, since it’s a two-way interaction, the client has the means to respond – for good or bad.  This is one of the reasons why it is so important for companies to monitor several social media platforms – to be able to initiate and rapidly respond to these interactive conversations.

Positive word-of-mouth marketing has always been a goal of top marketers.  We take people’s opinions, often holding them in high esteem – even if we do not know the people, and letting them affect our actions.  You may do a lot of research to determine which new car to buy.  However, your neighbor’s negative problems with the same vehicle model might be sufficient to dissuade your purchase for some other model.  The verbal interactions provided through social media can have a similar effect.
 
In the past and just as much as today, word of mouth is still the strongest and most powerful form of marketing and brand-building. The difference is the size of the audience, their ability to communicate and most importantly, the speed and potential to successfully build a brand.

So I ask you, is it branding that changed or the modality and tactics towards achieving the goal that has changed?

Mel DePaoli is the president and founder of Omicle located in Seattle, WA. She helps companies create a contagious culture by connecting the way the business is operated with how the business is marketed. Please visit Omicle for more information about how Omicle can become your Catalyst for Discovery. She is also interviewing companies for her upcoming book series, Brand or Culture: Which Comes First. Please visit Brand or Culture.com to get involved in the Brand or Culture Debate today! You may follow her on Twitter @MelDePaoli or become a fan of Omicle on Facebook.

by Melanie DePaoli

   This article was originally published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

Developing your culture is a lot like putting together a puzzle without knowing what the final image will look like. Just because you have all the pieces, doesn’t mean you know what the final outcome will be. The key is putting the pieces together—it takes time, patience and a willingness to make mistakes.

There are tips and tricks to putting a puzzle together such as, starting with the edges and dividing the remaining pieces up by color or pattern.  Starting with the edges allows you to create the boundaries or the framework. By defining the boundaries upfront, you have a starting point and a point of reference to go back to when the rest of the pieces do not make sense.  Every remaining piece will now go within that boundary—or so you think.

Completing the boundaries is quite an accomplishment, but it is not the goal. Stopping here or only focusing on the boundaries is what gets a lot of companies into trouble. Just because there is a physical boundary between the internal workings of your company and the marketplace, does not mean that the two never interact or that one is protected from the other. In fact it is the exact opposite; because there is a boundary the two areas directly influence each other.

The boundary subconsciously signifies there are secrets on the other side. No one likes to feel left out, that is why gossip spreads so quickly. Your employees want to know how your customers think and feel about your product, company or service so they are able to create better marketing, improve the offerings, increase sales, and create loyalty— the list goes on and on. The market wants to know the dirt about your company—do you really make a good product or offer the best service: how do you treat your employees, after all it may be a good place to work: is there some inside information that will get them a better deal—again the list goes on and on.

While this boundary looks pretty straight forward there is another element to consider, your employees. They go home every night and become a part of the market. “Great” you think, as you are running through all of the free information they can obtain for you. “Great” you think, as you run through all of the ways they will implement the new free information. “Great” you think, as your pride builds up because your employees are working around the clock to build and improve your company and its brand.

A friend of mine once said, “They pay me to come back the next day; they have to give me a reason to allow my work to influence my personal life.” What your employees say or how they represent your company in their personal time is going to be a reflection of how they experience working for your company. An employee’s perception of your company carries far more weight than any marketing campaign you will ever run—because they know the dirt.

So think of the ‘edges’ of your company as a flexible and transparent boundary.  Every action or reaction your company takes, both internally and externally affects what is on the other side. These transparent boarders are a great checks-and-balances point, but remember that it goes both ways: a change inside is always reflected outside and outside impacts are always reflected inside.

Mel DePaoli is the president and founder of Omicle located in Seattle, WA. She helps companies create a contagious culture by connecting the way the business is operated with how the business is marketed. Please visit Omicle for more information about how Omicle can become your Catalyst for Discovery. She is also interviewing companies for her upcoming book series, Brand or Culture: Which Comes First. Please visit Brand or Culture.com to get involved in the Brand or Culture Debate today! You may follow her on Twitter @MelDePaoli or become a fan of Omicle on Facebook.

by Mel DePaoli

   This article was originally published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

Businesses are always told ‘to do their research’ and ‘to make sure they really know their market.’ They often tell you that they do know their market and then proceed to describe them, (usually) in such general terms that might as well be anyone, someone, or even anybody—just as long as they breathe and have money. Sound familiar? No need to worry. We all do this at some point or another. The key is to recognize we are doing it (before it becomes a problem) and that it is okay to ask for help or say we do not know.

I have spent a good portion of the last year and a half doing research to find out if connecting a company’s culture with their branding was viable and determining the market and appeal. Overall, I think I have found some amazing results. I say found because what I thought going in was not entirely what I discovered to be true. I have been able to identify a unique niche that no one has and now I have the knowledge to fulfill it as well.

Because of the challenge of explaining an intangible, I have had a lot of opportunity to practice and get it wrong. It is still not perfect, but I describe it MUCH better today than I did a year ago! I also took to the opportunity to do some casual market research, once I was able to identify what I needed to clarify! That is the key; market research for research sake will tell you nothing. Research with a purpose will produce interesting results – often not what you expect.

I noticed that people kept associating what I did with a business coach, a marketing consultant or an executive coach. (For this, the terms coach and consultant are used interchangeably.) To me, the three are distinctly different and do not describe the services I offer. I will agree there is some overlap with all of them and the services I offer but, I do not describe the services I offer as any of those.

So, I designed a quick survey whose goal was to find out how people perceived the services offered by business, marketing and executive coaches (keeping in mind that coach and consultant are assumed to mean the same thing). While I did accomplish this goal, if I were to distribute the survey over again, I would add a few clarifying questions to make the results more accurate and more specific. I was so focused on finding out about the perception of the services offered that I forgot to ask who was taking the survey. Where they coaches or consultants themselves that were telling me about the services they offered? Or, were they people that had hired a coach? Having that information would have helped me target my market better and explain to other consultants how we could work together instead of view the other as competition. (Which I do not believe in, but that is a topic for another article.)

I found the results to be very interesting. Some of the results proved what I suspected, while others I found to be a surprise. In short, the survey proved that those are generic terms that really do not mean much of anything. While I am sure I will upset a few with that statement, it is not about what YOU say about your business, it is about how OTHERS perceive you. By using a generic term, you are confusing your prospects and doing yourself a disservice.

All of this information is interesting, but what does it mean?

For companies that offer these consulting services, I recommend they reevaluate how they talk about and promote their business. Yes, the general terms are easy for a quick conversation but they can devalue the services you offer making you a commodity. You cannot charge a premium price for a product or service that the client can get anywhere. Also, by being a commodity it means you have to do more work, more advertising and more marketing to show prospects why they should choose you over the consultant sitting next to you.

For my business, it confirms that I am not a business, marketing, or executive coach in a literal sense even though my services overlap some of the general perceptions. It also confirms that I do need to continue to refine the explanation of my services to prevent being pigeon-holed. Perhaps the most value I received from the survey was it gave me a better understanding of the top of mind reasons people reach out for help. It also showed that in a pinch, I can say I am an executive consultant. This is where the difference of a coach and consultant come into play. My services are more closely aligned with a consultant than a coach.

So, what do you do?

Please feel free to see the results for yourself at: Survey Results  

Mel DePaoli is the president and founder of Omicle located in Seattle, WA. She is also interviewing companies for her upcoming book series Brand or Culture: Which Comes First. Please visit www.omicle.com for more information about how Omicle can become your Catalyst for Discovery and www.brandorculture.com to get involved in the Brand or Culture Debate! Ms. DePaoli can be reached at mel@omicle.com.

by Susan Wilson Solovic, CEO, SBTV

    This article was published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

Because customers and clients are bombarded with advertising messages, it’s becoming tougher and tougher to make sure our marketing messages are heard. Think about how many ads you’ve heard already today. Now ask yourself how many you actually paid attention to and remember. Let me share with you how one creative entrepreneur captured media attention for her business. By the way, she just happened to have been my mother. 

Mom opened a children’s store in the small town where I grew in the late 50s. I’m sure she didn’t have a lot of money to market but she always managed to come up with some imaginative ideas. In March 1960, she read an article about the newly born Prince Andrew in England who was wearing hand-me-down diapers and she saw and opportunity. (This was before invention of disposable diapers.) She boxed up a dozen cloth diapers to ship to Buckingham Palace for the newly born Prince and notified the press. Here’s a copy of the front page of the March 14, 1960 newspaper with my mom on front and center. Pretty clever. 

Mass media advertising is expensive and you probably won’t get the results you desire. So what creative things are you doing to get the word out about your business? Think about ways you can tie into current events. Look for unique ways to touch your customers. Pay attention to where they get their information. What types of activities are they involved with?  Also, if you have marketing strategies that have worked for you and are willing to share, please do so. As small business owners, we are always looking for new ideas.

Susan Wilson Solovic is CEO of SBTV.com – Small Business Television.  SBTV.com is the first and only video news and information destination site for America’s small businesses. Solovic is the author of “The Girls’ Guide to Building a Million Dollar Business” which is consistently ranked among the top 25 books for women in business on Amazon and was listed as a “must read” in Entrepreneur magazine.  A winner of many prestigious awards and a popular guest speaker, Solovic has also spoken to more than 250,000 small businesses over the past four years. New members can sign up at SBTV and receive many benefits of membership. Solovic can be reached at: ssolovic@sbtv.com

by Melanie DePaoli

    This article was published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

You see me one time. This is someone’s license plate in the community that I am living. Since it is on a Corvette, at first I just thought it was funny. The more I saw it, the more it got me thinking—it’s true! We make decisions all the time based on this simple philosophy.

Prospective clients normally make their decision about a company with the very first person they meet or speak to and within the first minute. WOW that is a lot of pressure! It sounds like interviewing for a job . . . wait it is!

Think about when you hire a new employee. You are very selective, want the most for the best price and try to decide if you will like the person’s personality—if they will fit. Is this someone you can work with? Is this someone who your current team will work well with? Will this person be able to help us grow? Will this person be able to grow with the company? A lot of companies believe that most skills can be taught while personality cannot.

This is why it is so important to have a strong culture and to define what it is that your company stands for. By taking the time to define this, you create a work environment with standards for how decisions are made, a set of expectations for how customers will be treated and employees will interact, and you establish boundaries of what is right and wrong.

By defining your culture you also create what your internal perception and a desired external perception of your company. The internal perception is how the employees perceive each other and how they perceive the company. Do they work for a company that they cannot stand or is it a company that they feel supported by and takes care of them?

When people hear [insert your company name], what do you want them to think? What do they need to think in order for you to turn the prospect into a client? This is your external perception or your brand. Money can only buy so much; eventually true colors always reveal themselves. This being said, why risk walking a path that will end up costing you more in the end. Take the time and do it right from the start: define your culture so your culture becomes your brand and your employees and clients are saying the same message because they WANT to.

Mel DePaoli is the president and founder of Omicle located in Seattle, WA. She is also interviewing companies for her upcoming book series Brand or Culture: Which Comes First. Please visit www.omicle.com for more information about how Omicle can become your Catalyst for Discovery and www.brandorculture.com to get involved in the Brand or Culture Debate! Ms. DePaoli can be reached at mel@omicle.com.