The Power of Symbols for your Brand

By Cheryl Hayman, Hayman Strategy

How often do we sit and think about how symbols, pictures and taglines affect our brand? Conversely how aware are we of the effect on us of our favourite brands’ symbols and other visual identity references?

Are you a visual person, and does it matter?

From teenagers wearing Gap and Nike brand logos to adults driving BMWs, we are drawn to incorporate brands into lives. We all draw our personality and self-image from products such as cars, homes, clothing and even recreational activities, and products always have brand logos or symbols of some kind that represent them.

By accident or Design?

Nike probably got the best deal amongst all companies when Caroline Davidson designed its logo for just $35 in 1971. The main part of the logo hasn’t really changed with time. However it was 7 years before they realized that the text and the swoosh were overlapping each other.

As the brand gained recognition, the company name was dropped from the logo, which made it more simplistic and memorable. The company has different variations of this logo for its various departments like Skate, Soccer etc.

Creating a Visual Signature

One of the first steps in creating an identity for an organisation is the development of an effective logo. An appealing logo makes your business special and memorable in the eyes of your clients or customers.

Each element adds unique characteristics to a logo.

It is important to remember that your logo is not your brand. It is just one part of the entire brand implementation process.

Keep it simple.

An appealing logo makes your business special and memorable in the eyes of your clients or customers.

The simpler a logo is the more it is, the more cost effective it is to reproduce. Your logo needs to remain consistent in color, font and proportion where ever it is used.

A brand comprises many elements. These include its name, positioning (reason for being), trademark/trade dress (symbols, colors, typestyle, package configuration), and brand communications. These brand elements, when successfully developed and managed, create a strong identity for a company. Over time, this creates strong brand authority.

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Cheryl Hayman - Hayman Strategy Cheryl Hayman owns and manages a strategic marketing and business consultancy, Hayman Strategy, providing a broad range of business and marketing solutions to corporations. Prior to establishing her own business, Cheryl had over 20 years experience as a senior marketing executive in multi-national organisations spanning Australia, NZ and the UK. Cheryl undertakes a number of non-executive Board roles and sits on several Advisory Boards including the Australian Businesswomen’s Network. Cheryl is a Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute, holding a CPM. Cheryl personally undertakes continuous professional development within her various business roles, as well as attending external courses. Phone: 0408 200 545 or 02 9555 5776 Website: www.haymanstrategy.com Email: cheryl@haymanstrategy.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/cherylhayman Facebook: www.facebook.com/cheryl.hayman LinkedIn: See Cheryl’s Public Profile Member Profile: See Cheryl’s Member Profile

What change have you made to your marketing strategy in the last three months that made the biggest difference to your results?

We asked our community this question for the current issue of our Women in Business eNewsletter. A compilation of these answers was published for our community of women across Australia to learn from. Click here to read our current newsletter, and click here to read the answers we received.

Please let us know your thoughts, and add a comment here.

Useful resources from Ed Dale’s Internet Marketing Seminar

Last Friday to Sunday I attended an Internet Marketing seminar hosted by Ed Dale of 30 Day Challenge fame. You may know Ed from Internet Marketing this Week, an almost-weekly podcast that I highly recommend if you’re interested in what’s new in new media and technology.

The 200, or so, participants enjoyed both local and international speakers on the subjects of outsourcing, content development (including using video), search engine marketing, business best practise, using offline marketing to drive customers online and blogging. All good, practical, information.

The highlight for me was the ‘hot seats’ where brave participants nominated their website for review by an expert panel.

I was lucky enough to be chosen and as a result got great feedback that I’lll start to implement this week at the Australian Businesswomen’s Network website.

The Twitter tag of the weekend was #30dchome. I thought you may be interested in looking it up - as you’ll find that participants posted highlights from the program as well as some handy links.

The 30 Day Challenge

You may have heard me speak about The 30 Day Challenge before. It’s a free, annual program, that is designed to get you online and doing business. Last year over 30,000 people participated. I’m sure it’s coming again in 2010.

I’ll post something when dates are released but in the meantime you can keep in touch with news by:

• Subscribing to Internet Marketing this Week on itunes
• Following Ed Dale’s page on Facebook
• Following Ed Dale on Twitter

Additional Resources

• Guest speaker Lynn Terry (Affiliate Marketing)
• Guest speaker Leslie Rodhe (SEO)
• The fabulous Market Samurai tool

Cheers,

Suzi

Mapping Your Marketing

By Cat Matson, Alito

You often hear business experts talk about a business plan being similar to a road-map - it shows you the way to go, gives you milestones along the way and helps you progress your business journey - similar to how a road map helps you reach your geographical destination.

Marketing, though, requires a bit more than a road map. The marketing process is not linear. What you really need is a kind of topographical map – showing the surrounding landscape, the shape of the land, the gradient of the hills and mountains. It needs to show the multiple routes to a destination – and the fact that you may even need different forms of transport along the way.

Successful Marketing
Successful marketing unfortunately isn’t as simple as connecting the dots or paint-by-numbers. It’s a combination of many strategies that all work for your business because they match your business style but more importantly connect to your target market… bringing people to you ‘from all over’ your map.

Now I’m not a cartographer, and neither, most likely, are you (with the exception of ABN Member Linda Fairbairn of course). So how does someone like you create a marketing map?

Clarify your marketing outcomes. Ultimately marketing is about creating leads – so your question is what kind of leads do you want to create and ‘where’ do you want them? Do you want someone to sign up to your newsletter so you can stay in touch with them? Do you want prospects to call you to discuss their needs? A prospect is not a lead until they’ve taken some kind of action to connect with you – until then, they’re a stranger. So, how do you convert strangers into leads?

Identify the marketing activities that you can effectively apply resources to. I see many business owners doing marketing ‘things’ they hate, or can’t afford to execute properly, because they think they ‘should. Such an approach is self-defeating. I blog because I love writing and it comes easily to me. What marketing activities (networking, social media, advertising, events) do you enjoy doing and are happy to invest the time and money into strong execution?

Determine how the various activities interlink to achieve your outcomes. You may need to use a blank piece of paper and coloured pencils for this one and just create a diagram of interconnecting activities all leading to the ultimate outcome of quality leads. If you like something neater, use the drawing/shapes/SmartArt feature in Word. (If you’re a Mac user I’m sure you have access to some very easy and funky diagram-creation tools.)

Link your marketing activities back to your core business activities to see they fit. Can you see a logical flow from your marketing activities, to your sales cycle, to your product/services, to your revenue stream?

Execute. The best map in the world won’t get you to your destination if you don’t unfold it and use it. See my previous post on Maintaining Momentum for ideas on that one.

Have fun and make it an adventure. Think of your map as a sophisticated treasure map, showing you different ways to find your ‘pot of gold’ – or your pot of quality leads.

Marketing is a multi-dimensional process and therefore needs more than a ‘plan’ for achieving your outcomes. ‘Mapping’ your marketing, rather than ‘planning’ your marketing enables you to see a fuller picture and have a greater command over your marketing efforts.

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Cat Matson - Alito Cat Matson ignites the performance of small business owners, their teams and ultimately their businesses through a range of robust mentoring, coaching and education programs. She is a strong advocate for practical, pithy and ‘real’ business advice and loathes the ‘one-size-fits-all’, ‘you-too-can-be-widely-successful-if-you-just-follow-OUR-system’ approach taken by many ’so-called’ business experts. Cat runs Alito with her husband Keith who provides synergistic and smart accounting expertise to their clients who enjoy having streamlined business advice across all key areas. When not working, Cat enjoys spending time with her two young boys and reading interesting business books and biographies. Phone: 07 3289 7055 Email: cat@alito.com.au Website: www.alito.com.au Twitter: www.twitter.com/catmatson Facebook: www.facebook.com/AlitoFusion LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/CatMatson Blog: www.alito.com.au/blog Member Profile: See Cat’s Member Profile

The Characteristics of Influential Brands

By Cheryl Hayman, Hayman Strategy

Having watched the film “The September Issue” last week I got to thinking about how really powerful brands can influence consumers, trends, and thinking. I started reflecting on the concept of building brands of influence and considering whether they share characteristics from which we can learn as we build our own brands.

In the film, the power of Vogue Magazine to sway a nation’s fashion footsteps and to build or break designers and retailers seems immense. The impact it has is palpable. How others are affected and how they follow a leader of this type is also noteworthy.

As my daughter and I were debating the fact that very few people can actually afford to buy Gaultier or Versace, she shrewdly pointed out “that that doesn’t matter”, that these trends are picked up and copied appropriately across mags as low-brow as Dolly and Girlfriend, even for teen fashion.

So how do we learn from this? It appears that there are several characteristics to aspire to, and some which can be mimicked:

1. Be bold and confident: lead your consumers on a journey that creates a desire from them to be with you. Futurists predict that successful brands will evolve to have cultural and social impacts that determine their stronghold in an over crowded consumer world. People are said to be suffering “infobesity” from the bombardment of messages . New, pertinent on-trend responses are required.
2. Provide inspiration and aspiration: strive to become sought after by providing your customers each and every time with something that exceeds their expectations.
3. Cherish your brand: don’t sway to the temptation of changing and morphing, even if a competitor makes you nervous. Find ways to define your own brand’s landscape and remain true to that.
4. Know where you are going and what you stand for (as a brand). Create that dream for your business, through your brand, and then plan to hit it.
5. Surround yourself with Implementation Expertise-messages, resources, appropriate networks-and utilise their expertise. Vogue’s vision, or dream, has never wavered and those at the helm have to communicate it for the organisation to congregate behind, and believe in.
6. The Brand is the Business: To be influential, think bigger than the product or service you’re offering. Your brand is not just your product. Vogue is more than a magazine. It’s an icon of Fashion and Trend-setting.

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Cheryl Hayman - Hayman Strategy Cheryl Hayman owns and manages a strategic marketing and business consultancy, Hayman Strategy, providing a broad range of business and marketing solutions to corporations. Prior to establishing her own business, Cheryl had over 20 years experience as a senior marketing executive in multi-national organisations spanning Australia, NZ and the UK. Cheryl undertakes a number of non-executive Board roles and sits on several Advisory Boards including the Australian Businesswomen’s Network. Cheryl is a Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute, holding a CPM. Cheryl personally undertakes continuous professional development within her various business roles, as well as attending external courses. Phone: 0408 200 545 or 02 9555 5776 Website: www.haymanstrategy.com Email: cheryl@haymanstrategy.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/cherylhayman Facebook: www.facebook.com/cheryl.hayman LinkedIn: View Cheryl’s Public Profile Member Profile: See Cheryl’s Member Profile

5 ways to use social media in your ecommerce website — #30DSM: Day 9 - 30 Days of Social Media

Integrating social media into your ecommerce website can help build trust, increase sales and create a sense of community.

Today’s post  from guest contributor Clare Lancaster of Dot Marketing shows you 5 ways to use social media in your ecommerce website.

How can you integrate social media into your website?

Let’s get back to basics.

Social media is about two things:

1. Connecting with other people
2. Creating and sharing content - as conversations, articles, videos, images, recommendations

Social media happens wherever these two things happen. They can be on social networking platforms, news websites, forums or on your own website.

Here are 5 ways that you can use social media in your ecommerce website.

1. Add customer reviews and ratings

Social media technology allows you to go beyond publishing your own product descriptions and reviews – and allows your visitors to contribute their views about a product.

Internet users are valuing the recommendations of others in their network higher then advertising. As an eCommerce website owner you can help sell products by allowing visitors to add reviews that are published on your website.

Visitors can read the opinions of people other than the business owners - therefore building trust that will help you secure transactions.

2. Add a Twitter widget that pulls through your latest tweets

The keyword to remember when using Twitter is that it is social networking. It’s about sharing, not selling.

That’s not to say that you can’t talk about your business – engage with your followers and use your products to illustrate interesting points, reflect the personality of your brand.

To extend the value of the time you’re spending on Twitter and integrate your ecommerce website with the social networking platform you want to add a Twitter widget to your website. The widget is available free through your Twitter account and will publish your latest Tweets wherever you place it on your website.

Add a “Follow me” link to encourage website visitors to connect on Twitter also.

3. Add sharing buttons

Another great feature of social media is its ability for visitors to share content from your website and distribute it through their own social networks.

Content sharing buttons like Tweetmeme take the title of your page, automatically adds a link and connects to the users Twitter account to post the information.

This is a free way to distribute your content – taking it from one visitor seeing it to potentially thousands. Add it to your product pages.

4. Create video and embed it into your website

Creating video is cheaper to produce than ever before – it gives visitors another perspective of your products and allows you to do a bit of selling.

You can use video to showcase your products and embed them within your product detail pages. Alternatively get creative and invent a fictional character that blends your brand’s personality with product reviews. Here’s a great example by ArteryStore.com.

Remember with video – keep it short (under 2 minutes) and keep it entertaining.

5. Add a blog and share the story of your products and your business

With the popularity of social media (emphasis being on social) it’s become important to not only add personality to your business, but reveal more of what goes on behind the scenes.

Adding a blog to your website is a good way to do this.

If you’re not sure what to write about – keep the focus on storytelling. Tell the story of how you selected a new product. Let people know how your week was in the office.

A blog is a good way to build community and get feedback from your customers. Mention emails that you’ve received or a conversation you’ve had on Twitter. Keep the focus on social and you’ll be rewarded with a loyal community and audience.

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Clare Lancaster - Dot Marketing

Clare Lancaster is the founder of Dot Marketing an online strategy and marketing consultancy and has been working on the Internet since 2001. She writes a business and online marketing blog for small business owners and has recently launched www.twitterguide.com.au.

Visit www.clarelancaster.com.au to find out more or follow her on Twitter.

TODAY’S TASK

Can you implement any of these strategies into your e-commerce site? If so, which ones make the most sense to implement?

Tell us here.

Until tomorrow,

Suzi

Doner make this mistake. What’s the buzz with this retailer?

Ok, bad punn, but…

Here at 53rd Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan one Doner Kebab stand has a line going back quite a way. I’d guess there were over 30 people in line at 9.30pm at night. Hours earlier I’d passed and the line was also there then.

Around the corner (not more than about 12 metres away) another stand has no line. Just one lone operator turning over onions and spiced meats.

Go a little further and this stand holder has packed his bat and ball and gone home.

What’s the story? Somethings caused a buzz.

I couldn’t tell what their secret was from walking by. There WAS a signed marked “The Original Guys” . But what drew the crowd?

• awesome taste
• great service
• pure social proof (”This one looks more popular so I’ll go to this one too.”)
• recent publicity
• their website (yes, they really have a website)?

I’ll go back and see what I can figure out - but one thing is for sure - there’s something remarkable about this food retailer.

If your business (and that of your competitors) was as Doner Kebab stand…  which stand would you be?

What would you need to do to be the popular one here?

Kinda makes me hungry thinking about it.

Quick and Dirty Business Tips

Thanks to Australian Businesswomen’s Network advisory board member, Susan Wareham McGrath, who recommend this very cool site - quickanddirtytips .com. Their tagline is ” Fun, friendly, practical advice to help you do things better.”

The site offers short, actionable advice in easy-to-consume formats that you can listen to right on your ipod, or iphone. Of course you can also listen on your computer but it’s great for busy, on-the-move people.

I listen (on a weekly basis) to Digital Marketer (and Grammar Girl (I looooooove Grammar Girl. I always feel a little smarter after an episode ;-)).

Check it out and let us know which ones your favourite is!

My Internet Marketing Mentor - Corey Rudl

I don’t think you ever forget the people that made the most difference to your life. In business - it’s been my mentors that will stay with me forever.  This week was the fourth anniversary of the death of a man who was my internet marketing mentor. I’m not sharing this story because I am sad (though I miss him) but to share a few of the details of his contribution to my business and my life.

In 1998 (maybe it was 1997) I took off to Canada with my partner PJ, Kim Kiyosaki (of Rich Dad Poor Dad), John Burley (author of Money Secrets of the Rich) and a couple of clients to Vancouver to attend a marketing conference at Robert Kiyosaki’s suggestion. Robert (author of Rich Dad Poor Dad) had attended the year before, enjoyed it and so suggested we attend.

The three days was pretty typical of event… multiple speakers, each with something to sell, many with great information.

On the second day a young guy (he’d have been no older than 27 or 28) was introduced. He looked the typical geek with his glasses, narrow frame and shyness. Over the next hour or so as he spoke my mouth gaped open the whole time. He spoke quickly, so I scribbled notes as quickly as I could… his ideas, strategies, way of viewing the then new world of the internet, his enthusiasm and smarts were entrancing. I had never met anyone before who shared information like this. It was, at the time, the very bleeding edge of internet marketing and he, in his few years, had developed a name for himself as an internet marketing guru.

The next day I braved asking him if he’d consider coming to Australia to speak for my then company, Pow Wow Events. He pretty much said yes on the spot - I’m sure that was because of the lure of a far away place he’d not been to than for the opportunity to travel a long way to do business with someone he’d just met.

To be honest while I was ecstatic to be able to share his information with Australians I was also secretly wanting to keep him as my secret weapon. I wanted to take on what he was teaching and unleash it before our unsuspecting competition knew what hit them… and that’s what we did.

Not to big note our efforts, but we were very much at the forefront of website marketing and internet marketing in the late 90s and held that position for a while.

Corey and I kept in touch for many years and he continued to produce great content and be very innovative. His events in Australia were often sold out and despite the number of times that we held up placards saying “SLOW DOWN” he couldn’t help himself. He was passionate and time was short and he needed to give us the keys to being successful internet marketers.

The last time I saw Corey was at his wedding in La Jolla. He’d found his dream girl and he was the happiest I’d seen him.  In the couple of years previous to that we’d not worked together much but kept in contact and when he was in Phoenix (where I was living) he’d visit.

Only a few short months later he died while participating in one of his other passions, racing cars.

I was shocked, angered, and in disbelief. I called his mobile and emailed him hoping the news was just  gag… it must’ve been another Corey Rudl that the news was blasting about.

June 2 was four years since his passing. I still miss him but no doubt my feelings are nothing compared to how his family and wife feel.

None the less I realised only about 18 months ago that after his passing I fell into a rut around the area of the Internet.  Imposters were popping up to take Corey’s place as THE internet marketing guru. I was angry.

Enough time has passed now that I can truly express the gratitude that I have for the education that I received from him that , through its implementation allowed me, my business and our clients to be ahead of the curve.

The internet has changed a lot and I sometimes wonder what Corey would be working on in this environment of social networks and Google and You Tube (and I know all those things I mention are OLD compared to what he’d be working on now). I know that EVERYTHING I learned from him still holds true. The mediums have changed, but the fundamentals hold true.

I have met other masters in the area of Internet Marketing and I am open to learning from them and taking my skills forward. For an number of years I wasn’t. But I probably just needed time to grieve the loss of a friend.

I cherish Corey’s memory and thank him for coming to Australia all those years ago. We touched a lot of people together through our shared work.

Marketing - Looking for a great headline?

As the official copywriter in my business I’m often writing headlines for marketing emails, newsletters etc.

I used to take a long time going about it, try variations of other successful headlines, study marketing pieces on ‘1000 all time best headlines’ etc.

It paid off - many times.

At other times have at times I have thought “Gotta get this email out. What headline will do? Let’s just get it out.” and rushed a marketing email or letter out the door.

This nugget by Seth Godin reminds me - good copy can make magic.

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