Tag: marketing

Hot List! 12 Fab Finds for Your Business, Brand + Soul

Posted on by Maria Ross

5.17.16HotList (Blog)

With today’s avalanche of information coming at us every day, one of my joys here at Red Slice is to curate some fabulous resources for you.

There are so many smart people doing amazing things in the world: writing books, inventing time-saving tools and creating soul-stirring, shut-up-and-dance music (and hilarious parodies of said music!)

Here’s my Hot List of current obsessions: the people, books, tools, and music that will make your biz and life easier and more joyful. (Tweet the love!)

LEARN:

7 Things to Do When a Big Website Links to Your Post by my writing partner-in-crime, Sarah Von Bargen @yesandyes

20+ Social Media Hacks and Tips from the Pros suggests oodles of tips and tools to get smarter about social media management, including introducing me to MissingLettr (Tip #8) which I really dig. By @LisaDJenkins on @SMExaminer

8 Ways Lead Pages Can Grow Your Blog or Online Business by @melyssa_griffin. I just started using LeadPages and it’s been fabulous. There is SO much you can do with it to grow your list and sell your offerings online, and Melyssa explains it all.

DISCOVER:

Use this to easily put together an inspirational, funky or thrilling custom playlist for your email subscribers or Facebook fans? @8Tracks

Surprise a special client or customer by recording a personal thank you message. Will certainly cut through the email clutter and they will adore it. @vocaroo

If you are a speaker or workshop leader, please check out PunchSlide Design to beautify your slide decks and make them pop. I’m using them for an upcoming keynote to 400 people and I can’t wait to show off my new deck! @punchslidedsgn

READ:

Career Courage: Discover Your Passion, Step Out of Your Comfort Zone and Create the Success You Want by Katie Kelley: This amazing woman was my tough-love coach who, with just a few sessions, transformed the way I do business in 2010. Whether entrepreneur or corporate climber, you will love her savvy approach, meshing psychological counseling experience with her mad career coaching skills.  @Katie_C_Kelley

Frientimacy: How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong Health and Happiness by Shasta Nelson.  I adore Shasta personally and professionally. This woman is passionate about changing the world by creating better friendships. Unless you’re someone who does not want lifelong health and happiness, plus sizzling fun and nurturing friendships (whether you’re male or female), get this book.  @ShastaMNelson

Nail the Interview, Land the Job: A Step-by-Step Guide for What to Do Before, During and After the Interview by Michelle T. Lederman. Michelle is a dynamic and direct executive leadership and networking coach who is also a friend and a past client! With targeted information for the recently unemployed, new graduates, and parents returning to the workforce after an extended absence, this book is a crucial tool for people at any stage in their careers. @mtlederman

MUSIC:

This song is my everything right now.

This parody of it is a MUST-VIEW if you have toddlers…be prepared to laugh until you cry.

And THIS amazingly cool jam by JT may just be the song of the summer!

What hot picks do YOU have to share? Please post them in the Comments below!

Image via Flickr

“I am not a marketer.”

Posted on by Maria Ross

5.5.16NoOneGetsMe(Blog)

Do any of these refrains sound familiar?

“I don’t know what I don’t know about brand. Why do I need it?”

“I hate marketing, I’m not interested in being the star of the show. It feels slimy.”

And my favorite (and the most common):

“I’m not a marketer.”

Don’t get me wrong. The fact that folks have these beliefs is why I have steady employment and I’m more than happy to serve.

But let me be clear: You are a marketer. (Tweet me!)

You may not know the ins and outs of writing a killer blog post, or how to do Facebook ads correctly or why you need a messaging platform…..but you are a marketer.

Marketing, in my view, is about sharing the passionate truth of your story to the right people so that they know you solve a problem they have – or you can deliver something to them that they really, really crave.

When it comes down to it, your work either helps people avoid pain or find pleasure. Whatever that “pain” might be: struggling in business, feeling lonely, spending too much money. Or…whatever that “pleasure” might be: saving money, losing weight, gaining confidence, etc.

Marketing is NOT: Lying, coercion, extortion, bragging, selfish or cruel. While many soda, food companies or politician may not subscribe to this is beside the point.

FACT: Marketing is communication.

If you enjoy what you do, if it provides value for people and if you’re excited about talking about it, then guess what? That’s marketing.

Whenever you overdeliver for clients, delight customers, or tell someone about your cool new offering or snazzy new product with all the zeal of a tween at Bieber concert, you are marketing.

Doesn’t mean you still can’t grow and learn exactly which steps to take and how to get to success.

Never again let me hear you say, “You are not a marketer.”

There is a brand and marketing genius inside you, bursting to get out. You just need Glinda to the Good Witch (a.k.a, me) to show you how to use those ruby slippers you’ve been wearing all along and guide you down the right road to get home.

Are YOU Your Ideal Customer?

Posted on by Red Slice

ideal-customerLast week, I had the thrill of speaking on the world-record-breaking Authority Super Summit. It was 100+ speakers providing content-rich strategies for how to build an authority brand. People I adore such as Dorie Clark, Michelle Lederman and more were all a part of it.

One of the questions I got in my session was, “When creating our ideal client profiles, is it okay if one of them is based on me?” My short answer was yes, this usually happens with solopreneur businesses, as one often starts a business because of a need he or she may personally have.

But let me expand on this, now that we have time.

Yes, in creating your two to three ideal customer or client profiles, someone just like you could possibly be one of your segments. But be careful how you approach this.

If you sell something that is not necessarily something you yourself would use, then no, you would not be one of your segments. For example, let’s say you are a psychologist who specializes in domestic violence survivors. You yourself may not have experienced this and therefore, it would be dangerous to assume you know their wants and needs firsthand. Or let’s say you sell skateboarding gear to teens but you are in your 50’s. Not to say you couldn’t do this, of course, but I wouldn’t assume that your target audience’s needs, wants, pain points–and even sense of humor–would be identical to yours. Lastly, let’s say you are a female leadership coach and you specialize in helping alpha male C-level executives increase their emotional intelligence. Again, you can see why basing one of the segments completely on you would be a mistake.

With my own business, I target solopreneurs who crave more knowledge and confidence in their brand and marketing efforts. They may not be sure where to start or what to do next. But I do, which is why they come to me! From this standpoint, I can’t make assumptions that they know the same things I know. I have to take a step back and explain fundamentals and terminology.

But…

Behaviorally, my ideal solopreneur client is indeed like me in many ways. We have the same ambitions, need to create impact, and drive to do something good in the world. We both balance work with making time for the joys in life. We might both like drinking red wine or watching Game of Thrones or even appreciate the same sense of humor. In those areas, I can base some of the profile on myself. And same holds true for my corporate segment ideal client, progressive marketing leaders in small to midsized growth companies who embrace what brand can do for their marketing effectiveness.

So my ideal clients are like me in some ways, but not in others. If they were too much like me in terms of their needs around my area of expertise, they potentially would not ever need my services.

It’s all about the blend. (TWEET THIS!)

I invite you to look at both where your ideal customers are different from you (where you can add the most value to them) and where they are the same (where you can create a brand voice and vibe to which they can relate). This blend of both is the sweet spot for attracting and delighting the right people, but more importantly, converting them to buyers and loyal fans.

Want to work with me on your ideal customer segments and exactly who you should be targeting? Let’s spend 90 minutes together in a Brand Booster Session to hash it out!

4 Things You’re Doing to Sabotage Your Business on Social Media

Posted on by Maria Ross

10.14.15SocialMediaSaboteurs (Blog)

Starting a Twitter account and sending five tweets a day is not enough.

Requesting connections from everyone you’ve ever worked with on LinkedIn is not enough.

Sending a daily email to your subscribers is not enough.

I mean, sure, those things can work for you. But not if you’re not doing them right.

Most companies, from one-person shops to global corporations, now recognize they need to get busy on social media. And in that same vein, many companies (from one-person shops to global corporations) do things on social media that make me smack my hand against my head and cry out, “Whhhhhyyyyy can’t you get out of your own way?!”

Are you engaging in any of these four behaviors on social media? If you are, I’m guessing you are not seeing the results you’d like. You’re not attracting new fans, your content is not being shared – and you’re not generating clicks, sales or new donors­–depending on what you desire.

Saboteur #1: BUY! BUY! BUY!

If all you’re doing is using your social media account to push your products, you may as well stop wasting your time. Social media marketing is about engaging your potential customers. You want to woo them over time and deliver exceptional value so when they are ready to buy, they will turn to you. This means posting content they care about, not content you care about, and inviting interaction. Remember, social media is not a billboard, it’s a conversation (more on this below.) They don’t want to be sold to….yet. You are in the courtship phase, so try to keep your content relevant, interesting, and valuable about 85% of the time. Can you offer advice related to your offerings, feature success stories, share interesting articles? This is why blogging or podcasts are so great, as it gives you valuable content to share that is not solely about sales. Once you prove that you offer value, then you can push “product” the other 15% of the time. But do it gracefully, tactfully. If you offer enough value the majority of the time, your audience will not mind the occasional plug for your products or services because they will already be raving fans. Don’t be that brand that constantly screams at your audience to buy. What’s intriguing or worth sharing about that if I don’t trust you well enough to want to advocate for you?

Saboteur #2: I, Robot

Social media is S-O-C-I-A-L. Would you go to a neighborhood barbeque or cocktail party and use unnatural jargon, talk about yourself in the third person or act stiff and formal? Of course not. You shouldn’t do that in social media, either. You need to speak like a real human would to other humans. This is how you create a connection and engage your audience. Be clever. Use slang. Reference pop culture. Curse a little, if that is who your brand is. If you can, have those posting on social media be transparent, speak in the first person, and share personal experiences. Speak the language of your audience. People relate to people, not a soulless brand robot. Customers will want to interact with, share and stay loyal to a personality, not a pitch.

Saboteur #3: Automating Customer Service

I know, I know. Many larger companies have to scale and cut costs somehow. But it’s painful when you get a Tweet response to a complaint and it’s blatantly obvious the reply is from a bot and not a real person. Especially if the response has nothing to do with the actual issue. Virgin America and Jet Blue do a phenomenal job of reacting quickly and personally to any issue you raise on Twitter. Follow their accounts to get a taste for how your social media customer service should be working. And yes, as with all useful tactics, it requires time and investment.

Saboteur #4: One-Way is the Only Way

Once again, social media is social. You can automate a lot of your posting but you are still responsible for jumping in and interacting with your fans and followers. You don’t have to do it everyday, but someone has to do it. There is a publishing house I follow that automates all their Tweets and every single one promotes one of their books. That’s it. There is no other valuable content being pushed out (see #1), no engagement or interaction, no questions for folks to chew on. Not even any shared articles or interesting advice. It’s so obvious this is just a “set and forget” strategy and this is why they are not seeing any return on their effort investment. You can’t just push out your agenda like a billboard and expect to be shared, clicked or enjoyed. Share interesting posts. Thank folks for Re-tweets (but you don’t need to do this every single time, as it makes for a boring stream!). Give shout-outs to customers, connect folks you know to each other, promote what other colleagues have going on, pose questions, start a Twitter chat or Google Hangout. There are lots of ways to interact with your followers. But you have to jump in there and do it every now and then.

Bottom line: If you are doing social media “wrong” you may as well stop wasting your time and focus your energy elsewhere. There are plenty of other ways to build a business, but if you want to see true ROI, avoid these landmines. (Tweet this!)

Which of the above is the greatest “A Ha!” for you? Have you found a clever way to work around some of these saboteurs like a stealthy ninja to ensure your social media shines? Please share in the Comments below!

9 Hot Women Your Business + Brand Need Right Now

Posted on by Maria Ross

6.2.15HotList (Blog)

I’m going to be straight with you: stop trying to do everything yourself.

You know who you are: In an effort to “save money,” you sign up for every DIY course under the sun, thinking you’re going to have time to: perfect your writing, code your website, design your flyers, and everything else you need to do to run your business or promote your message. In addition to, you know, doing your actual work.

There’s definitely a time and a place to go it alone. Heck, I offer a self-study digital program that enables you to put together a clear, crisp brand strategy on your own – and folks love it. But savvy business people also know that no one can be an expert in everything. Why should you be, when there are fabulous resources out there? Not to mention that there are just certain things you may enjoy, like writing your blog or designing your materials, and some things that make you want to poke your eye out because it will take you three times as long to be half as good. Time better spent on the real, revenue-generating value you offer, whether that’s making your custom jewelry designs, working with paying clients or writing your next novel.

Folks often ask me for referrals, which I love to provide. This is not a zero-sum game. If someone helps me be successful, my responsibility is to mentor and share to help you, too.

If we can’t share our resources to lift everyone up, why are we even doing this “entrepreneurship” thing? (Tweet this!)

Enjoy my Hot List of 9 ridiculously talented people that will help your biz + brand shine bright. And yes, they are all women (#girlpower). You’re welcome.

Norma Maxwell of Connect Interactive. My website shaman. She has designed and built outrageously on-brand websites for me as well as many of my clients. She’s the genius behind my recent website facelift! Norma gets that your website is not just about good looks, but that it should speak to your target audience and represent your brand well – plus ensure a great user experience to achieve your goals.

Sarah Von Bargen: Sarah and I are long-time partners for many of my clients. She is the writing genius behind my SLICE Sessions. She loves to ghostwrite blog posts or eBooks – and she’s amazing at articulating your unique brand in a way that gets people excited and engaged. She has written a lot of great stuff for me over the years.

Tammy Martin of Martin Marketing: Tammy is a Facebook marketing expert for savvy soulful entrepreneurs. And not just about Facebook ads per se but how to use them to build a true sales funnel and lead your prospects down the path to purchase. She’ll help you build your following, your email list and generate crucial traffic back to your site – all while setting up both your ads and your unique landing pages, dealing with all the technology behind-the-scenes, installing all tracking pixels to make sure it’s working, and tweaking as needed. We had great results working together and I’m eager to work with her on more!

Alison Monday of Tiny Blue Orange: Alison is my website wizard and guardian. She is a designer and developer and ensures your site looks good and stays safe (she’s a techie at heart and is all about security, uptime, and performance). She helps me create pages, improve layout and has designed promotional JPG’s for me. She has also helped some of my clients build wonderful websites that required sophisticated back-end complexity and unique imagery.

Sandy Jones-Kaminski of Bella Domain Media: Sandy is a networking maven and LinkedIn ninja. She combines her expertise in how to network online or offline with her vast knowledge of how to use LinkedIn to generate leads, find connections, and get found by the folks who matter most. She has all kinds of social selling and networking tips and tricks that will change your business.

Anne Watson Barber of Almond Tree Social: Anne specializes in helping her clients boost the ROI of their websites via SEO, paid marketing campaigns, Infusionsoft eMarketing and other tools. As a Search Engine Marketing manager, she focuses on boosting conversions and traffic for large, complex websites. Fun fact: She was a News Editor for Wall Street Journal online before going freelance.

Social Media Gurus: These talented experts have been behind the scenes of some killer brands ranging from authors to consultants to restaurants and can help you develop a practical and powerful social media plan – and even ghostwrite and manage pages for you.

Karen Rosenzweig of One Smart Cookie Marketing

Tracey Warren of Ready, Set, Grow Marketing

Katie Kay of Virtually Savvy

And if you need a dynamic speaker to motivate your marketing team, liven up your next business event or inspire conference attendees into action, you can always enjoy my unique blend of branding and inspirational wit and wisdom but please check out these other fabulous folks as they are gifted presenters on their specific topics. Bookmark this post for when you need to find an amazing speaker for your next event.

Image Credit: Tomi Tapio K via Flickr

7 Simple and Stunning Blog Post Ideas to Keep Your Ideas Flowing

Posted on by Maria Ross

5.5.15 7EasyBlogPostIdeas (blog)
You’re staring at the cursor and it’s blinking at you, taunting you. You sigh.

When you were out driving earlier today, you had a ton of clever blog post ideas that just came to you with no effort. But you couldn’t write them down. And now – poof – they are gone with the wind.

This happens to me all the time. I seriously wish I could record the thoughts I have right before falling asleep. I’ve written 5 novels in my head this way. But I can’t remember a damn thing once I wake up. So I was inspired by a hilarious video from my buddy Amy Schmittauer of Savvy Sexy Social to share my own take on 7 simple and stunning blog post ideas – these will help so much when you can’t think of anything to write about.

And BONUS TIME: Any of these can easily be turned into a free email opt-in download, a lead magnet for your next course, an eBook, a podcast, a video…..you get the idea. Recycle, people.

Oh, and the numbers below are arbitrary. It’s up to you to pick how many you can create – but play around with being short and sweet (3 quick tips…) versus providing a more exhaustive resource (64 ways to….). See what resonates with your audience the most.

7 Simple and Stunning Blog Post Ideas – When You Can’t Think of What to Write About (Tweet This!)

  1. 3 Crucial Tips for… (YOUR SUBJECT AREA HERE). …Building a Website, …Finding Inner Peace, …Choosing a Killer Date Outfit, …Buying the Right Engagement Ring. Whatever your business does, surely there are 3 basic tips that you always seem to share with prospects or customers. This worked well for me when sharing 4 Clever Ways to Make it Easy For Others to Promote You and 3 Tips for Smarter Small Business Marketing. Don’t fall into the trap (as I once did before a wise woman slapped me upside the head – with love) of assuming “everyone know this.” They don’t. It’s why you have a job.
  2. 6 Questions to Ask When… (YOUR SUBJECT AREA): People love to read articles that guide them when making a decision. And, heck, no one says you can’t choose questions that would immediately point them to your products or services if it’s a good fit – just make sure you’re being unbiased, as people may feel like you’re being slimy instead of helpful. So how about: …Choosing the Right Accounting Software, …Picking the Perfect Executive Coach, …Creating Your Social Media Strategy.
  3. 5 Powerful (YOUR FIELD) Lessons from (POPULAR NEWS TOPIC/CULTURAL REFERENCE): This one is super fun, because it allows you to be timely (and show up in what people are searching on right now) and showcase your cleverness in relating your expertise to something that culturally binds us. One of my most popular blog posts was 4 Powerful Business Lessons from James Bond and Skyfall. The other form this can take is “What (POPULAR TOPIC) Can Teach You About (YOUR FIELD).” Relate key lessons or tips you always talk about to something timely and hot and give it a fun spin (if the topic allows for it) or simply analyze a current news story through the lens of your expertise, as I did in popular posts about Lance Armstrong’s and Susan G. Komen’s epic brand fails.
  4. 7 Lessons Learned When (YOUR FIELD OR INTEREST): You have wisdom to share based on your experience (See #1 above) and your audience is thirsting for it. What can you share about mistakes you’ve made, unique things you’ve done, or clients you’ve worked with? What can they learn from your story? Remember, share your lessons but ensure you make it about how it applies to the reader. I loved sharing 7 Lessons I learned While Writing A Book…And What They Can Teach You as well as, yes, the 7 lessons that a brain injury can teach you about your brand.
  5. Pose a question related to your subject area: Think about the most popular questions you get asked about your business, brand or profession and turn that into a single-threaded blog post. How Do I Write Good Sales Copy? How Do I Work with a Stylist? How Long Does A Website Take to Build? What is a Brand Strategy? This helps you showcase your expertise, offer great advice and even make it easy for new people to join your tribe and not feel like they don’t know some inside joke. Remember, your audience may be at different phases of the buying cycle and are only just now getting to know you and your brand.
  6. Interview another rockstar expert: Are there folks related to your field from whom your audience would loooooove to get the inside scoop? You don’t have to be the expert in everything. But you can be the go-to resource for curating that info and brining those guests to your community. Are you a health and wellness coach? Interview a stylist to help your clients showcase their brand new health bods. Are you an Etsy store selling handmade jewelry? Interview a party planner on how to throw the perfect jewelry party for your friends. Do you sell customer management software to small businesses? Interview a branding expert to give them tips on how to build their brand online and create compelling content. These can be super easy to create. In my Slice of Brilliance column, I interview experts in related fields that are of interest to you and send them a 3-question form to fill out. You get a great blog post, your audience gets great content, and you get the added bonus of that rockstar also promoting your post! #Winning
  7. Make one observation on your industry and present your point of view: These are the thought leader posts, the ones that inspire, delight, provoke thought – and get shared. There must be something you love or hate about your industry that you have a view point on: your disgust with smarmy sales pitches (if you’re a sales consultant), your crush on brands that give back to the community (if you run an advertising agency), your confusion over why contracts can’t be written in plain English (if you’re a lawyer), your deep hatred of hyperbolic software sales claims (if you run a software company). How can you make this personal commentary interesting and relevant to your audience? Ensure there’s a strong takeaway that they can ponder or act upon – otherwise it’s just a rant. I tried to do this with my observations about how perfection holds many people back from birthing their great ideas into the world or why you are called to create something that matters, rather than spew more noise into the world.

P.S. Need help coming up with more compelling content? Want to learn the secrets to writing copy that seduces your audience? Want more content creation tips? Get it here.

Image credit: qnuckx via Flickr

What Are Your Competitors Success Secrets? Here’s How to Find Out

Posted on by Maria Ross

04.14.15 secrets BLOG

Is it possible to check out your competitors without falling into a deep, dark pool of insecurity and self-doubt?

Yes. Here’s how.

Paramount to this process is the act of objectively, strategically seeing what your competitors are doing. There’s little benefit to weeping with envy over your competitor’s perfect prose but it is helpful to notice how many service offerings they have or how often they post on Facebook.

There’s a  fine line between diligently staying your course and sticking your head in the sand. It’s just ego to think you never need to change and adapt. You must know what is going on in the marketplace and more importantly, what your prospective customers are seeing and experiencing if you want to stay relevant and compelling. Great businesses understand the fine art of this balance between nimbly reacting to competitor moves and staying true to their own vision.

With that in mind, I created a handy, dandy worksheet for you. This worksheet will help you gather tons of helpful information and remove a lot of those self-esteem ruining moments.

Share this worksheet and help others learn about their competitors the objective way. (Tweet this!)

Business

How many products or services do they offer?

Do they post their prices? If so, how much do they charge? If they have similar offerings to what you have, are there features they include in the price or do they charge extra?

Are their offerings one-on-one and customized? Do they offer packaged info products? Group offerings? A mixture of both?

Are their offerings evergreen and always available? Or do they open and close periodically?

Does it seem like they’re a one-person operation? Or do they have a large team?

Do they have testimonials? How many? Are their testimonials on a separate page or on specific service pages – or both?

Website

Does their site look professionally designed? Is it easy to navigate?

What is the vibe and the main messages or benefits they tout?

How do they present their offerings: by industry, by audience, by type?

Do they have a newsletter? How do they entice people into signing up for their newsletter?

How many places do they link to or promote their newsletter and other offerings throughout the site (cross-linking)?

Do they have a blog? If so, how often do they post?

Are their blog posts related to their offerings?

How long is their About page? Are there outgoing links on their About page? If so, where are those links going?

Do they use a pop up to capture emails?

Social media

Which social media platforms are they on? Where are they most active?

How often do they post on those channels? What type of content do they post?

How many followers/fans do they have on each channel and more importantly, how ENGAGED are those fans? (RTs, Shares, Likes, Comments).Which posts get the most comments, shares or likes? Are there common threads you can see in their topics, format or which posts are most popular?

Do they @mention people or use specific hashtags?

Do they use images?

What “voice” do they use in social media? Is it consistent with their brand? 

What link do they use on their social media profiles? Does it go to their home page? A landing page?

Print this out, pour yourself a glass of wine (I may be drinking a nice shiraz) and see what insights you can gather from your competitors.

And then use that information to tweak your online space accordingly.

Have you ever researched your competitors online? Share your best tips in the comments!

P.S. If you find that most of your competitors are using Twitter more effectively than you are, this will help. If you need help with Facebook, read this.

photo by Grey World // cc

How to Understand Your Competitors Without Falling Into a Jealousy Trap

Posted on by Maria Ross

04.07.15 jealousy TWITTER

Stop me if this sounds familiar.

An intelligent, experienced marketing professional gives you the sage advice to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing.

So you do.

You subscribe to their newsletters. You pore over their lush, beautifully written blog posts. You stalk their social media profiles and notice that their followers number is in the tens of thousands. You read all their testimonials and then stalk the people who gave those testimonials.

And instead of feeling inspired and informed, you feel completely, horrifically consumed by jealousy.

How can he get away with charging so much?! Why do her tweets get retweeted so many times? How’d he get 12,000 Facebook fans? I’m doing all the same things … why is she so much more popular than I am?!

(cue minor melt down)

It’s important to know what your competitors are doing. It’s a lot more important to maintain your self-esteem.

With that in mind, here are five things you can do to stay abreast of your competitors without losing your mind or your sense of self. (Tweet this!)

1. Know your strengths and preferences
Maybe your biggest competitor has an amazing Instagram account, filled with photos of her sweet toddler and handsome husband, but you’re super private. Maybe they publish five long, thoughtful posts each week and you’re more of a once-a-week blogger.

Before you check in with your competitors, take a few minutes to remind yourself of what you truly love doing and what you could do without. If you’re loathe to use Pinterest, it doesn’t matter how many Pinterest followers your competitor has, you won’t be using that platform.

2. Build your success backwards
What does success look like for you? Is it attending mid-week matinees because you can? Taking a month off every summer? Paying off your school debt in one fell swoop? A high-ceilinged, light-filled loft in Tribeca? However success looks to you, it’s probably more complex than Instagram followers or numbers of retweets.

When you know what your version of success looks like, you can reverse engineer it. You can work time into your schedule for matinees and summers off. You can save or earn with your school debt in mind. You can check out Tribeca’s rental prices. When you’re taking steps towards your personal version of success, you’re less likely to be threatened by what others are doing.

3. Know that popularity doesn’t always equal profitability
One of my most successful friends didn’t have a website till a few years ago. She ran an incredibly successful consulting business that relied exclusively on word of mouth. And she was raking in a six-figure income with a wait-list that she’d refer out to others.

Likewise, I know a few people with tens of thousands of Instagram followers who are barely scraping by. Or writers with New York Times bestsellers who still work part-time at ad agencies. A person’s numbers – their social media followers, their retweets, their blog comments – don’t tell the whole picture. Not by a long shot.

4. Look at their bigger picture
Some of my favorite bloggers and online personalities have lives that are very, very different from mine – which means their offerings, blog posts, and social media updates will be very different. Marie Forleo is a wildly successful business coach who speaks mostly to women through highly-styled, polished videos she produces each week. Natalie Sisson of The Suitcase Entrepreneur lives life as a global nomad and provides fabulous tools, content and resources for fellow wanderlust-seekers who want to create lifestyle businesses that don’t tie them down. Pioneer Woman lives on a cattle ranch and home schools her four children and her successful blog following has led to her own show on The Food Network. The Glamourai is a ridiculously stylish 20-something fashion blogger who lives in NYC. Joy The Baker is a single, childfree, cat-loving food blogger who makes a home in New Orleans. I love these women; our lives couldn’t be more different.

And because our lives are different, we approach business differently. I’m a new mom; I’m not interested in devoting 60 hours a week to my business. I don’t want to just target women. I have other passions such as acting and writing that I want to build into my work. When you feel the green-eyed monster rearing its head, take a few steps back and consider the bigger picture – both yours and theirs.

5. Follow and research strategically
Checking in on your competitors doesn’t necessarily mean reading their blog daily or noting each and every time they tweet or post a photo. That’s a recipe for anxiety and neurosis.

Instead, set aside a few hours each month to see what a few competitors are up to and then approach this practice as an objective investigation. Less “I’ll never write as well as they do!” and more “I can see they post once a week, every Wednesday and tweet five times a day.”

In fact, next week I’ll be sharing a worksheet to help you objectively check in with your competitors. You’ll emerge with tons of helpful information, self-esteem in tact. Want it sent directly to your inbox? Sign up for my newsletter!

How do you walk the line between information and insecurity? Do you make an effort to see what your competitors are up to? 

P.S. More self-esteem boosting marketing and branding advice here.

photo by Javier Morales // cc

3 Things You Must Do For Your Brand Story to Bloom

Posted on by Maria Ross

03.31.15 ArticulateMessage(blog)

It’s all well and good for us to talk about having a strong brand story. But that’s only part of the “story” (pardon the pun).

Whether you are a one-person consulting business or a 1000 employee technology player, there are 3 phases to brand “storyhood” that must all be addressed in order to have real market impact – from hiring the right people to attracting the right customers or clients:

Define: Sure, everyone who works here “knows” your quirky brand personality or strong values, right? Wrong. If your brand story is simply a wispy tale that only old-timers will understand – or worse, simply lives in the minds of the founders – you are lost before you even begin. How can you expect the market to know your story if YOU don’t even know your story? What is it? Have you defined your brand strategy? Have you nailed down the most important points, stories and practices that make up your business’ DNA? If you talk to different people across the organization, will you get a different answer? And don’t forget the one answer that makes cringe: “Well, I don’t know…it’s kind of hard to explain. You just know it when you see it.”

If you can’t define your story, how can you expect your customers or clients to do so? You know your business best. Define your brand position internally: What are we about, what makes us tick? What is our vibe? Who are we talking to? Where do we fit in the competitive landscape? Button this down for yourself or your internal team before moving on to Step 2…

Articulate: Now that you’ve hashed it all out, pulled it apart, examined it from all angles, gathered the stories, emotions and benefits that make you special, you have to WRITE IT DOWN. Articulating the brand story is where most businesses fall down. It’s not enough for you to know your own story if you can’t give the market words to describe it. What is the mission and vision? What are you value statements? What is the tone of your copy? Which benefits will we tout over and over that we want to own in the marketplace? Bring in a talented copywriter if words are not your thing because you must choose your words wisely. Words matter. What is the script you want others to say? Wal-Mart is about low prices. Nordstrom is about exquisite customer service. Virgin America is just wonderful, hip, cool and cheeky. ASPCA is a voice for abused and neglected animals. Tom’s Shoes gives a pair of shoes to kids in need when you buy a pair.

Share: Now that you’ve defined who you are and articulated the story, are you just going to pat yourselves on the back and adjourn the meeting? Heck no. It’s time to share the story – internally first. Are you sharing this story with every single functional area such as HR, Finance, Customer Support so they can apply the story to their own everyday actions? Does HR know the brand story so they can hire the right people who will support it? Does everyone in marketing know the story so they can make smart campaign decisions? Does sales know the story so they can pitch to the right prospects about the right value? Build your brand equity from the inside out. Once everyone inside understands the brand story, then you can better share it with the outside world to generate leads, serve customers and differentiate from the competition.

Define, Articulate, Share: You must go through these 3 steps to make your brand bloom (Tweet this!)

Image credit: GotoVan via Flickr

Heed the mouse: Who do you serve and what do they need?

Posted on by Maria Ross

02.17.15 Brands for all markets (blog)

A trip to Disneyland and my husband’s profound comment recently put me in my place. Here’s the tale:

In my own book, Branding Basics for Small Business (2nd Edition), there’s a passage titled: All Markets Have a Brand Need. In it, I seek to clarify that “brand” is not just about high-end “luxury brands” but about being clear and consistent in the audience you reach and the market need you fill. From page 49:

Sometimes people think brand means expensive, as in “brand name.” High cost and exquisite quality are indeed brand attributes, but you could choose to sell a generic T-shirt or dinnerware that’s cheap and disposable, since certain audience segments have a real need for those items. As long as you clearly convey this message in everything you do, you can become known as the place to buy inexpensive white T-shirts or the most stylish, cheap, disposable dinnerware. Doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with that.

Having a strong brand doesn’t mean you have to charge the highest prices or offer the highest quality. It’s a nice side effect that often brand loyalty means customers are not buying based on price alone. But if your brand represents low prices (Wal-Mart) you can’t just all of the sudden start charging a boatload.

Brand is about setting expectations – and delivering on them. (Tweet this!)

Witness my recent trip to the Disneyland Resort to deliver a conference keynote. I texted a good friend that the Disney experience was so perplexing. High-touch customer service, calling you by name, a VIP Concierge at my beck and call (well, as the speaker, I guess!), and all staff (cast members) catering to your every whim. Such white-glove service – juxtaposed with people walking into a high-end steakhouse with flip-flops, mouse ears, and football jerseys.

And then I got snarky. As I’m prone to do.

“But such class and yet so much trashiness in one place is very confusing.”

OK, so I’m not proud of the “trashy’ comment. People are on vacation. Sometimes a vacation for which they’ve saved up for years. It was incredibly snobby even though I was just trying to be funny.  (Sorry, I’m human)

When I tempered this remark to my husband later on the phone, explaining how perplexed I was by the contradicting Disney brand experience, this clever man said,

“That’s what Disney is all about, though: that everyone deserves special VIP treatment, especially when they are on vacation. Doesn’t matter who you are: Disney treats you like royalty. That is their brand.”

And it hit me like a ton of bricks. There was no duality in the Disney brand. It was perfectly consistent with that brand strategy, as my husband described it. There are markets for everything and Disney’s market is making everyday people feel like royalty. So you see a wide array of demographics when you visit. Because it’s not about incomes, or tastes, or whether you like the opera or NASCAR. It’s about serving people of all ages who want to experience magic. Who want to be treated like VIP’s. Who want to be awed, delighted and spoiled rotten for a brief period of time.

There are all kinds of markets. And there are indeed all kinds of brands to serve those markets. Disney is not confused. It knows exactly who it serves and why.

The question is: Do you know who you serve? And can those people quickly tell from everything you say, do and offer that you will serve them exactly what they want and need?

Heed the Mouse. He’s a pretty smart little guy, isn’t he? (And so is my husband)

Your turn: Can you describe your target audience’s main desire that you serve? Or do you feel like you sometimes serve multiple audiences and have challenges creating a consistent brand as a result? Fire away in the Comments below!

Image Credit: Sean MacEntee via Flickr