As this popped up, many marketing bloggers online have begun talking about how this might be relevant for for marketing purposes. I can’t say I have ignored it. In fact, I want to know - do you have any ideas for marketing and branding on Lively?

While Lively creates a similar experience to Second Life, it uses websites as a platform rather than purpose built software.

What Google Lively is About

It’s a platform for people to interact with one another when they visit their favourite websites. I think Niniane Wang (the creator) sums it up best on the Google blog:

“…to express yourself with and without words, and to do this in the places you already visit on the web.”

Can you imagine using your avatar in a 3D room to read the content of your favourite websites? This may be just one reality made possible with this new platform - and for those looking to connect with customers, it could be a dream come true.

Marketing on Google Lively

I’ve had a bit of a play around on it, and I’ve found a couple of features which I think could be very useful for any businesses looking to use this service. Currently you can:

• Promote Your Youtube Videos
• Post Links back to Your Site From Objects
• Place Your Room on Your Website to Engage Visitors
• Allow Users to Experience Your Brand First Hand

In the future I suspect you will be able to:

• Contribute Objects, Room Shells and Wardrobes
• Put RSS Feeds into Rooms
• Place Advertising in Rooms
• Program Events to Run
• Buy & Sell Objects, Clothes, Rooms and Shells

Could you imagine the worth of a room which attracts 10,000 people daily?

Are There More Marketing Applications?

Google is busy testing a number of initiatives to make the web into a more social place. Just take a look at what Google has under their belt:

• Google Friend Connect
• Google Orkut
• Google Social Graph
• Youtube

With all these projects working together, I suspect Lively will become a lot more popular. Especially as it matures and Google opens the doors for innovation through APIs and what not.

What Marketing and Branding Opportunities Can You See on Lively? Discuss…

1. Be clear about what you do

If visitors don’t see your site as being relevant to them – they can leave in 3 seconds. So make sure you’re clear about what you do. Use strong headings in your content, add relevant photos and make use of dot points to cut through the clutter. A good copywriter can help achieve this through brevity. This will help keep visitors on your site, but only if you…

2. Receive Targeted Traffic

You have to be attracting the right sort of person to your site. For example, if you’re selling web hosting, you need to think about the sort of customer you want to attract. Where will you advertise? How is the performance of different keywords in your PPC campaigns? Is your ad copy over-promising? Make sure all of this is congruent with the sort of customer you’d like to attract and you’ll increase your conversion rate dramatically.

3. Direct Traffic to the Right Landing Page

So many businesses direct their ads and search marketing efforts at their homepage. If you have a lot of information and pages on your site, this can be really detrimental to conversion. Research shows, that if someone cannot find what they’re looking for on your site within 3 page views, you’ve lost them. Also, if you’re running AdWords on your site, a specialized landing page optimized for certain keywords will help you pay less.

4. Direct Focus toward Your Call to Action

Make reference to your Call to Action throughout your copy. Continually remind users of the benefits of “subscribing now” or “purchasing before the offer runs out”. Even using arrows and pictures of people facing your call to action has been shown to increase conversion rates.

5. Use a professional and relevant design

A good design that makes effective use of white space can make your landing page easier to read and more attractive for lazy “energy conscious” customers to read. Make the design relevant to what you offer as this will communicate IMMEDIATELY to the visitor what it is that you do. If they can find that out by your site design, you might just hold their attention for long enough.

6. Make the action easy to perform and flexible

Offer flexible payment and contact options. Don’t ask too much of your visitors or they’ll abandon ship. Only ask for as much as you need – where possible.

7. See what Professionals and Your Competition are doing

Take a look at conversion specialist’s sites and see what they’re doing. Chances are, they probably have a clue or two. If your product or service is markedly different from what these conversion specialist’s sites offer, you should checkout your competition. Does their landing page suit what you’re after? Is the call to action obvious? Do you find it easy to respond to this call to action? Where did you find them?

8. Incentivise Your Call to Action

Give people incentives to respond to your call to action. If you’re building an email list, offer people a free report or software. Some companies I know go as far as offering gift-vouchers or physical products to encourage subscription rates. If you make the incentive too elaborate, people might take advantage of it though.

I think Amazon does a good job of this too, where they encourage people to “Order Now to receive by such and such a date”. The opportunities are endless.

9. Reduce Percieved Risk of the Call to Action

People won’t do something that puts them at risk, so reduce this anxiety by proving your trustworthiness. Offer testimonials, money-back guarantees and trial offers – people will feel much safer if they have to invest very little into the process. You can also build trust in the eyes of your consumer by placing logos of associated brands and awards on your site.

10. Is your call to action appropriate?

Will your customers convert on the first visit or do you need to establish a relationship with them? I’ve encouraged some businesses, where the purchasing decision for customers is complex, to encourage subscription to a newsletter as well. That way they can develop relationships with their customers and demonstrate their value over the course of a month or two and increase the chances of winning their patronage.

11. (Bonus) Pre-empt Your Call to Action

In your ad copy or source medium (reviews, link building, directories), foreshadow the call to action by using it in there. For instance, if you’re placing banner ads on a website to encourage more people to sign up to your newsletter, ask people in the ad to “Visit now for a free subscription to XXX. Limited time only. Worth $29 / month!”. This will help visitors understand what to do when they come to your site and consequently improve your conversion rates.

In order to reach an effective conversion rate, you need to optimize your lead generation, your website copy/design and your sales funnel. Without careful attention to each of these areas, your conversion rate will suffer. By refining these areas over time however, you’ll benefit from a synergistic effect. The key ingredients here are spare time and knowledge about your customers.

_{(image credit)}

People are discounting messages they encounter through the media, more than ever and marketers are forced to interact with customers on a wide variety of different channels. This, combined with the newfound power of individuals through social media, has called for a new definition to serve marketing practitioners and academics more appropriately.

Recently I was contacted by Christine Heath on behalf of the American Marketing Association and informed of a revision of the definition of marketing. It definitely piqued my curiosity, so I decided to take a look and see what changes they had made to the 2004 definition and what it means for us all.

Here is the AMA’s new definition of marketing:

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

This is in contrast to the 2004 definition which states that:

“Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”

What Does This Mean For YOU?

It recognises that marketing is an activity that both you as an individual and organisations can use. This is an important revelation for individuals who market websites or those involved in personal branding, such as Dan Schawbel. Basically, this stresses the importance that everyone should have some understanding of marketing, as influential members of society and businesses which serve each others’ needs.

You can think of it as being another step in openning marketing up to the masses and working the perception that we’re not just about advertising and promotion. Marketing is about exchanging value.

Although a bit late, keeping abreast of changes like these are always useful as sorts of rudders, steering you in the right direction.

Is This Definition Correct?

Marketing Power, the offcial blog of the American Marketing Association, has openned up for discussion about the new definition, so feel free to air your thoughts about the changes, here or at their site.

She is the author of a number of popular blogs such as:

• BizGrowth News
• Todays Women in Business
• The Podcast Sisters
• Talking Coaching

On top of that, she also contributes to this blog and to The Huffington Post. As you can see, she’s a busy woman and her success on these websites has led her to speak on business blogging and podcasting at her website and social media un-conference at PodCamp Ireland.

We’re very proud of our Krishna and congratulate her for been recognised so far and for the massive success of her new media empire.

If you would like to help her out, please vote for her here, it only takes a minute.

Keep it up, Krishna!

So far, Ed and Derrick have made a post calling for people who are interested in joining them in their project and have already invited several people to help out. Unfortunately, I have had to decline Ed’s invitation due to my schedule but if you have any experience with Place Branding, or you know Windsor well, perhaps you should drop by and lend a hand. After all, this is an experience that money can’t buy as you’ll be working with industry professionals such as:

• Ed Roach (Brand Consultant, The Branding Experts)
• Derrick Daye (Managing Partner, The Blake Project)
• And perhaps the invitees such as Eli Portnoy (Founder/CEO, Portnoy Group Inc.), Marcia Hoeck (President/CEO, Hoeck Associates Inc.), Alan Williamson (Destination Brand Developer), Marcia McMillan and John Norman.

I have to say, so far Ed has done a fantastic job of generating awareness for the issue as he has only recently started blogging himself. If you’re keen to see how experts attack a branding project, then I highly recommend following this.

Perhaps you would like somewhere to showcase your marketing potential? Maybe you want to attract exciting opportunities for your business. Or could you benefit from adding this website to your resume?

Well before we get into that, I’d like to extend you an invitation to write for us.

As a popular resource for small business and website owners, we’re looking to give our readers the most useful information on how to market and brand their small businesses. We are looking for new contributors who’d like to join the SmallBusinessBranding.com team.

Since there is a lot to tell you about, please read on…

How Can SBB Help Me?

Over the past few months, the writers on Small Business Branding have experienced some amazing benefits from blogging on this site. From meeting investors to attending a conference, the site’s exposure is certainly a great boost towards your career goals.

For instance, Danielle has been blogging on SBB for just a few months now, and has had a number of amazing opportunities open up for her business, CloseConnexion, including an opportunity for international expansion.

“From the exposure SmallBusinessBranding.com provided I was contacted by a UK entrepreneur who has expressed interest in licensing events from my business CloseConnexion, in the UK. It has also put me in touch with a number of other amazing people who I would otherwise never have met.

Blogging for a popular site can spread your name, business and brand far and wide opening up all kinds of opportunities.

On a personal level, it’s been a wonderful experience to share my start-up journey. Both in the sense of thinking through my own lessons and knowing that others can benefit from them.

I highly recommend the experience.”

- Danielle Rodgers, Brisbane Australia

Nick Rice has been blogging with SBB for several months now and continues to write popular articles on topics such as creativity in marketing, lead generation and corporate governance. Due to his popularity on the website, Nick has experienced a lot of positive benefits of blogging on this site. Most notably, he has built a strong, informative blog (Strategic Design) and he has driven qualified leads to his company website at Cre8tivegroup.com.

Here’s what Nick has to say:

“When I saw the open call, I jumped at the chance to be an author at SmallBuinessBranding.com. It’s not often that you get a chance to have your thoughts in front of thousands of interested (and targeted) people each day. SBB has been a great tool in helping my build a strong personal & professional brand. A lot of credibility comes from writing with an international group of authors on an international stage. There’s nothing better than writing to help build a business. What used to be a stack of business books on the shelf is quickly turning into a long RSS feed. The web has democratized publishing and SmallBusinessBranding.com is at the forefront of helping to improve the small and medium businesses that drive economies around the world.”

– Nick Rice, Willmore Kentucky

Kammie, our passionate and lively life coach has generated some amazing responses to her articles. With her background in communications and a zealously positive attitude on life, her aura of inspiration has benefited many people on SBB. This has in turn generated a lot of traffic to her blog and some curiosity about her method - ‘Passion Meets Purpose’.

“Writing for SBB has opened many doors for me. The added exposure has increased traffic to my personal business blog and the relationships and new business developments that have come about since blogging there, I couldn’t have gained otherwise.

It also allows me to stretch my own ideas, thoughts, and concepts about what branding and marketing a small business is all about. I look at branding from a different perspective than I used to. Through sharing my articles on the site, I am constantly evolving my personal brand story as well. I’m grateful for the opportunity to explore, share and expand the brand dialogue at SBB.”

- Kammie Kobyleski,

As for myself, SBB gave me the opportunity to visit a major ‘un-conference’ in the USA, appropriately entitled Mplanet 2006. If it weren’t for SBB, I’d never have traveled there and experienced such an event on the other side of the world. Nor would I have extended my personal brand, documented my knowledge and experiences or even met the amazing people I have through this blog.

If you are passionate about marketing and branding, you’d be insane to pass up this opportunity. Even if you’re slightly interested, give it a shot. You have nothing to lose - unless you let the opportunity go.

What’s Required?

We’re looking for people who have a desire to write for a large audience and share their experiences in business. People who have previously written work on the internet or traditional media (Magazines, Newspapers, Radio and TV), will be looked upon favourably. Similarly people who specialize in services such as business coaching, copywriting and other areas which small business owners will find interesting.

Our aim is to give everyone a set day on which they’ll have their articles posted - like a column. If you can devote time to writing 4 articles per month, then we’d love to hear from you.

I get it Rob - So, how do I apply?

Just send me an email at contact@smallbusinessbranding.com with some background info on yourself and preferably any links to previous work that’s on the web. We’d love to hear from you.

I thought I’d leave you with one last thought from Brad though (which I believe is one of the coolest things about blogging here)…

“SmallBusinessBranding.com is a a marketer’s playground as you get to do what marketer’s do best… which is INFLUENCE PEOPLE. The articles you write will influence small business owners on marketing strategies that will eventually help them create their professional dreams. How can you not want to be a part of something so special?”

- Brad Williamson, Dallas Texas

On his blog, Brand Corral, Ed is hoping that people will leave him some ‘unscientific data’ about his city of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, in the form of comments.

All he asks of you is, “How you view his city” and “Where you’re from”.

If this project gains enough momentum, I think it’d become viral – especially with all the Canadians out there, eh. After a quick visit to Wikipedia though, I think this city is well worth the free publicity.

So, spare a minute or two and let Ed know what you think about Windsor, Ontario.

PS. Don’t cheat by visiting Wikipedia first :).

So, after backing up the site/database and uploading WordPress 2.1, it’s safe to say that we can go back if we encounter any problems. You can notify me of any issues via this post or contacting my by email.

The new version looks great and the WordPress Team seems to be extremely devoted to their user base. From what they write on their site, you can look forward to seeing more updates and improvements coming out as they undertake their new development cycle.

Leading up until the next major release scheduled for April 23, they are encouraging users to vote for features here. I hope you continue to browse the website uninhibited - otherwise let me know and I’ll fix it.

Unlike hiring a freelance professional to do the work, you can put it to the crowd instead! They can write your code (like at www.cambrianhouse.com), give you ideas, advise you in certain areas (like at www.innocentive.com or www.linkedin.com) and even design your website for you (such as at www.sitepoint.com/contests)!

Aside from the obvious benefits such as price, competition and the chance to advertise your project - you don’t have to pay for the designs you don’t use. To top it off, you can define a strict creative brief for your crowd of designers to abide by.

Despite the fact I haven’t used it yet, the quality of the content produced at Sitepoint.com seems to be quite promising. Just take a look at this contest for an Autism site.

Not only do the designs look professional, but at the cost of a few hundred dollars, it seems to beat the prices of a LOT of graphic designers out there.

Has anyone actually tried one of these services out? Or have you been scared off by something? I know submitting your work to the internet can publicise it to your competitors but for many people I can see it being a fantastically viable option. Checkout Crowdsource for more alternatives.

They’re using marketing principles to create and deliver tunes to their fans (customers). Unfortunately, due to the fact most artists are too busy to read about and coordinate their own marketing, many of them struggle to get off the ground.

Although I have focused this toward bands, branders might also find this useful. Anyway, here are some popular ways to get the word out about yourselves.

What are you all about?

I’ve been seeing a lot of bands these days that seem very superficial. If you’re truly serious about your band you need to walk the talk. That means you should be an entire package which ultimately says something about your group and its music.

If you’re a funk band, ooze a “funky kind of vibe” and wear cool gear to match your attitude. Jamiroquai, one of my favourite artists, does this exceptionally well. He lives and breathes funk.

From head to toe, you literally need to become a package.

Be Provocative

Stand out from the clutter and be seen. There are some crazy eye-catching promos that have been done before and if done right they can really pull a crowd. A holiday company sent out coconuts with an ad on them, asking people to take a break from the hustle and bustle to go on a luxury cruise around tropical islands. Surprisingly, it caught the attention of many cash-paying customers.

Click-Tour.com (gone now) made a hugely successful viral campaign where the artists behind the website sent out “clickers” to everyone who signed up to it. The “clickers” themselves were for guys to use when they saw a girl check them out. In case you’re wondering… I did send away for one :).

Using provocative campaigns like this to promote your band can be expensive but it’ll produce its worth in results accordingly, as long as you do it right.

Setup a MySpace

Yes, I know, It’s pretty cliched but it’s too useful to let pass. On MySpace, you can get a whole bunch of friends and fans. Meanwhile you can get your tunes playing and a background designed to match. One of the most popular artists to use this successfully were the Arctic Monkeys. With nearly 16 thousand comments and 64 thousand friends, they’re kind of popular. Here is an article which might help you set one up.

Get onto Last.fm

One of the coolest new places to market your band is at Last.fm - It’s a website which allows people to connect with other people with similar musical tastes by logging every song you play, on their website. Like MySpace, you can upload songs to your artist profile for people to listen to and let them comment on your profile. In addition to that, it allows you to build communities with forums and let you see who your most devout fans are.

Finally, if you’re lucky, you might be recommended by Last.fm to hundreds or thousands of users with similar music tastes.

Be careful not to be your own best fan though!

Post on YouTube

Throw up some videos. You’re literally limitless here as long as you keep the video in line with your band’s image. You can add it as a soundtrack to a video, make a film clip of yourselves or even just a video of you playing live. Some people are bound to watch it - especially if you post your video on.

Blog

If you want to look professional you need a proper website and also a blog, as the trends say these days. Through your blog you can connect with your audience on a more personal level and use popular social networking tools like digg, MyBlogLog and MySpace (All these of course will also drive traffic to your website).

Through this unique promotional piece, you can build up search traffic to your site, benefit from interlinking blogs and the dynamic content to bring back band fans. I’ve been following Yaro’s blog traffic tips and have found it quite useful - even for my own blog.

Get a Line of Merchandise

One of the best forms of promotion is word of mouth and if you can get a “sic” T-shirt design or some bling, your fans will wear it and promote your band for you. The Avalanches, a popular Aussie band, sells designer T-shirts and donates a portion towards a cause. Their designs are so popular that they sell out over and over again. I’m still yet to get my hands on a shirt which I like from them.

Regardless, you can use it as a tool to promote your band and convey what you stand for at the same time.

Find some partners

Like in my article on co-branding, a nice strategy for your band can be to leverage your relationships with other bands and companies. Not only will they help promote your brand, you can communicate something different about your band. So if you’re rallying for environmental awareness, you might team up with an environmental group or blog to show what you stand for.

Although, taking a political stance can be a very dangerous thing to do. People guard their beliefs with strength these days. So, be careful of what you stand for - it could be your coffin.

I hope you found this useful. I’m a firm believer that you can hit the jackpot by putting yourself in the middle of social media. By the way, if you happen to turn out to be the next Arctic Monkeys, swing me an invite to your concert!

Robert Kingston
Professional Toe-Tapper

It begins by making some bold claims such as “Why Market Segmentation is a Sham” among others. The most surprising claim of all, is that the authors, David Minter (President) and Michael Reid (Principal) of Minter and Associates state that their process for developing ideas will improve new product success rates from 1-in-10 to a staggering 1-in-2!

In other words, how to reach a success rate of 5 times the American national average!

But, I Don’t Need Ideas, Do I?

“All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.” Napoleon Hill, Author of Think and Grow Rich.

If it weren’t for ideas, there’d be no growth, no innovation, no healthy competition in business. Minter and Reid explain the fundamental importance of ideas and explain how they are the foundation for our society. Without ideas, who’d have invented the wheel?

Of course, ideas are not just tickets to new products and exciting services - they can be also be used for creating your advertising, steering your market positioning or defining your long-term strategies.

Minter and Reid brightly describe the importance of filling your organization with those they call barbarians and prophets. Whilst the prophets develop great ideas, barbarians execute them confidently - and without these people or a proper process in a business, the company stagnates. Whereas many organizations are losing these types of people, Minter and Reid express the significance of attracting these key drivers of innovation.

How can I make it happen?

Besides having prophets and barbarians to influence innovation in business, the ideas should originate and develop in a sturdy process of development and refinement. The authors explain that it’s merely the same process used in grade 3 science class.

1. Study the Subject
2. Form a Hypothesis
3. Test the Hypothesis
4. Adjust the Variables
5. Re-test the Hypothesis

As you can see on their website the method above is the foundation of their “Idea Engineering process” that made Minter + Reid the successful company it is today. The book is testament to their experience and they explain the process along with all the tidbits to go along with it to be understood by anyone.

Although just following the process on the website would be beneficial to anyone looking to develop influential ideas, the reasoning behind the process, as its described in the book would complement the process beyond measure.

My Impressions

I’m not completely familiar with the topic of product and service innovation but this book has opened my eyes appropriately. Before reading this book I severely underestimated the power and importance that good ideas have in our society. The first few chapters are really great at explaining the necessity for great ideas.

Ultimately, the process outlined in the book is clear and objective. It rings true on a number of levels but I’m still slightly skeptical. Perhaps professionals like Minter and Reid (and maybe 3M) can hit a 50% product success rate but the fact that many companies struggle to get even a 30% product success rate still haunts me in the back of my mind. Whilst I believe it to be possible to reach 50%, you’d certainly have to have your marketing wits about you.

Overall, I would recommend this book (aff) to anyone interested in marketing and especially to those of you who are:

• Wanting to go commercial with a product
• Deciding how to market your business creatively
• Trying to position your company
• Interested in practical Market Research

Wishing You Success and Prosperity in the New Year,
Robert Kingston

Sure there are lots of profitable niches out there, but how do you go about differentiating yourself in a saturated market like wedding photography? I mean you can’t just expect people to find you amongst the herd of other businesses – you need to stick out!

So, what can you do?

Well here’s a little tool which will do just that…

Market Positioning

Your position in the market is made up of how people perceive your brand in relation to other brands with regards to important aspects (benefits) of what you offer. For example, say you offer beef jerky (Gee, I ate so much of that stuff in the US!). If your competitive advantage was lots of beef jerky at a low price then, to consumers you might look like this:

In this instance, consumers looking for budget jerky will find you. Although, in order to make the positioning most effective, you need to find some things out first.

1. What are the most important aspects that people are looking for when buying your product?

Just for a moment, assume there has been a boom in the doggy daycare industry.

You’re struggling to attract customers and you’re currently trying to offer consumers a smörgåsbord of benefits. The best thing to do in this situation actually sounds quite counter-active but by narrowing your focus, you will be able to appeal to people much more than by ‘being all things to all people’. It’s a way of operating in a niche without selling something totally obscure.

Do some market research and find out what people are looking for in your industry and develop a list of aspects. Depending on the level of competition in your industry, you might look at doing anywhere from five to as many as humanly possible. The more points you can differentiate yourself by, the more you are likely to stick out.

Here is an example list that I came up with:

• Keeps them occupied
• Teaches them new tricks and manners
• Friendly customer service
• Employees are well-trained dog handlers
• Cheap to send your dog there
• Extra services like shampooing
• Flexible hours

2. From your list of important aspects, what would be your brands two strongest points?

If you were offering a premium service like Chris, then you might find that you’ll pick attributes like “Employees are well trained dog handlers” and “Best customer service in the industry”. However, if you don’t pick ones which match your brand, you’ve got a problem with the way you’re entering your customers minds.

If you want to be a premium brand but you’re strongest points are “Cheap Prices” and “Keeping dogs occupied” then you’re not going to considered as much as a brand who focus is congruent with a premium brand.

3. Place each aspect on an axis and rank your brand in relation to your most fierce competition.

So as you can see in this example, this brand differentiates itself from competitors on the basis of cheap prices and good service. If you find your business has lots of competition around you, then you might want to look at differentiating your brand through other aspects until you have found your own little niche.

4. Once you’ve found one that suits best you can begin to make your business shine through those points.

For example, if you want to be perceived as cheap and friendly you might make all your marketing say the same thing. So your slogan would be “The Cheapest and Friendliest Dog Care in all London!” As long as you’re the best, the fastest, the first or the only brand in your ‘new niche’, you’ll be first on the list for many customers who are after your unique service.

Although, just saying it once isn’t enough. You need to say it across everything you communicate to your customers and prospects. Here are some places you should consider to communicate your market position / strongest points through:

• Brand image
• Storefront
• Advertising
• Employees
• Service
• Product Offering
• And any promotional material you give to your customers.

Once you’ve got your market positioning coming out your ‘A’, you can be rest assured someone will fall in love with your brand.

Points to Consider

As with all things in marketing you need to test and measure your success. If your market positioning isn’t profitable enough, maybe you picked the wrong aspect to position by. Maybe your customers can’t afford a premium brand in a poor suburb. It’s very important to monitor your market position and identify with your strongest, most sought-after points.

By focusing on two aspects I don’t mean that you need to throw away all your other benefits either. You can still offer customers a smörgÃ¥sbord of benefits, but just downplay them and focus on what you’re actually good at. In fact, you can even surprise customers by giving it to them unexpectedly.

My Final Note For 2006…

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and is looking forward to an equally good New Years Eve. Take it easy on the cocktails and beer – Well… at least until the clock reaches Midnight!

We’re very happy to have you all as readers and I’m thrilled to let you know that SBB has big plans for 2007. We look forward to providing you with entertaining and informative marketing and branding articles in the New Year.

Anyway that’s it from me for 2006, I’m Robert Kingston and I’ll see you in 2007!

Interestingly though, this is an example of a trend that speakers at Mplanet 2006 are predicting to grow in popularity next year. Have you also seen the Nikon Flickr! campaign? That single campaign dramatically boosted sales of Nikon’s new cameras. It just goes to show how much power and energy that consumer driven projects can have.

When Firefox can use their community to develop ads and supply funding to promote the software, what opportunities does that present to you?

Check-out how cool these videos are… Would you like to have your adverts made and displayed for free? With all the giant communities and fan-boism of different software packages it really makes me wonder why companies aren’t leveraging the power of their brand loyal advocates…

I mean, how come other community projects, like Linux and Open Office, don’t have the same scale of community support? What could they do to create a sense of community and ’sticking it to the man’? Well here’s some quick thoughts I had which you could apply to your own business…

• Create an identity for your brand.
• Create a cause that people are willing to fight for.
• Create external pressures to maximize community bonding.
• Provide a place for the community to play.
• Make good friends with influential bloggers, who share character traits with your project.
• Make the community feel responsible for it’s own success.
• Help them to promote your product with press kits and banners.

What do you think?

Will other community projects follow suit?

Managing The Customer Experience
Reinventing The Marketing Organization
The Digital Age and Implications For Marketers
Consumer Trends in The Third Age of Globalization

In fact the day was so packed full of practical advice, I’m going to warn our regular readers in advance that it might be a little buzz-loaded, but nothing too far reaching. The day started smoothly and as per the schedule it lifted off with an excellent varied breakfast, accompanied by a book on behalf of Dave Senay, the CEO of Fleishman-Hillard, titled BOOM. This was then followed by the first session of the day (of which, I had my mind made up).

The first session on managing the customer experience was conducted by Scott Bush (Corporate SVP, CMO of Maritz Research) and Michael Treacy (Co Founder and Chief Strategist of GEN3 Partners). After hearing the buzz on the grape vine about Michael’s fantastic speech on innovation in consumer products, I just had to see what all the hype was all about.

Basically, Michael began his speech by discussing how customer experience can:

Destabilize a brand
By generating negative publicity.

Enhance a brand
By having an experience which compensates for other lacking features of a brand (ie. High price).

Define a brand.
By becoming renowned for a certain aspect of the customer experience.

Michael also shared with us, some grisly statistics about customer service:

• 43% of customers who leave a brand do so due to poor service.
• 77% of those people blame poor employee attitudes.
• Then, to top it all off, 83% of people who have bad service tell someone else.

To make sure you avoid this pitfall, Michael recommended 4 tips to solidify a company, so as to provide a consistent and effective customer experience. He recommended researching customer experience in your industry, involving employees in delivering a brand experience, tying employee incentives to customer satisfaction metrics and focusing the rest of the company around the customer.

To finish up this session, Scott discussed Michael’s points within various case studies and they answered questions together. This was an entrancing session yet I was still eager to get into the next one, despite Scott’s profound topical enthusiasm.

A short break and a walk led me to my next session which entailed Peter Kim’s (Senior Analyst at Forrester Research) insight into moulding an organization to effectively integrate Finance, Sales, IT, HR and Management in the organization to focus on the customer.

Peter’s key points were that customers should be the reason for re-structuring. He highlighted research which shows most companies restructure their marketing function to comply with organizational changes. Peter contended that this approach was short-sighted and often, when functions are confined to insular structures, they communicate ineffectively and they make it more difficult when coordinating an integrated marketing campaign.

For those of you who are marketers reading this, one aspect of Peter’s session really stuck out for me. He basically said showed to us, research which displayed the new skill set which marketers require for success:

1. Strategic Thinking
2. Relationship Building and Networking
3. Business Acumen
4. Quantitative Analysis
5. Process Creation and Management and;
6. Managing Financial Assets.

Now, the first three were pretty self-explanatory but the last few, being predominantly left brained skills, were most interesting. In an age where we have so much control over our metrics and finances, it is no mistake that these skills are becoming requisites for marketing success.

Finishing up, Peter described some of the opportunities for Customer Centric Marketing Organizations (CCMO):

• We should describe our target market in a persona (ie. Jill is a 34 year old woman who likes dogs and spends her time reading books).
• We should market towards particular lifestyles.
• We should cultivate a culture in which everyone is a marketer and, if possible, appoint the CEO as the prime example of what the company should deliver.

Unfortunately we could only spend an hour and a half in this spellbinding presentation before it was over. Luckily though, lunch was served and boy… It was GREAT.

We had exotic salads (well, exotic to anything I’ve ever eaten where I live), tender chicken breasts, a meatball soup and a selection of sweet desserts. Eventually, the ‘feast’ was over and we all assembled in the main hall to listen to the Perspective session on future trends.

I don’t know why so many people left so early as this was one of the most practical sessions of the day. Presenting first in this session, was Gian Fulgoni, Co-founder and Chairman of comScore Networks – a research firm specializing in giving marketers insight into internet marketing trends.

Gian, informed us as to the trends in consumer internet usage and the implications of those trends for marketers. The biggest points which rose in this session were not entirely surprising to most Internet marketers but are nonetheless important to know:

• Enormous growth still predicted
• Increasing broadband penetration
• Broadband users are spending 40% more than dialup users, online
• Google accounts for 45% of all searches. So, why do Internet marketers and SEO experts only optimize on Google?
• In August 2006, 110 Million US citizens downloaded streaming video.
• On average 63 streams viewed per user (per month)

So what does this information say for the marketer? Well Gian told us this:

• A study showed that advertising is still noticed more on TV than any other media.
• Meanwhile Streaming Video is rising – So will advertising on this media be received better?
• Advertising around user generated content is more appealing to younger audiences.
• Average age of blog visitors and participants ranges from 35-37yrs old.
• Advertising for fun products and services are better received on sites of user generated content.
• Advertising for trust products and services is best received by consumers on general media sites.
• Contextual placement is a huge issue.
• Ultimately, the consumer is in control.

That wraps up the key points of Gian’s speech and Katherine Sheehan (SVP of GfK Roper Consulting and GfK NOP), had the tough job of following this up. She spoke on consumer trends in the third age of globalization.

One of the main factors she noted in the age of globalization was that consumers had greater levels of mobility.

• Social mobility – As in mobility between social classes.
• Physical mobility – As in traveling quickly around the world.
• Cultural mobility – As in culture can move and change quicker than ever.
• Virtual mobility – As in you can become well known on the internet.

Finally, she discussed how consumers live with a growing paradox of choice. On one hand they want luxury, yet on the other they want it at extremely cheap prices. Also look at the paradox between healthy food and junk food. She finished the speech with very specific information regarding trends within US citizens from 1975 all the way through to 2007 and what to expect in the future.

I feel sorry for the people who missed this session and I think it would be extremely responsible of the AMA to follow up the people attending the event with copies of all the presentations. Overall, though I’m over the moon with the professionalism and quality of the event. Attendees were friendly and receptive to networking, food was great and the hotel it was hosted in, was perfect. The insight I gained at this event was truly invaluable and I’ll be surprised as to how Mplanet 2008 unfolds.

For now though, I’m going to digest more of this information – God knows I’ll need to! Anyway, thanks for following my coverage of this event…

Best of Luck Branding,
Robert Kingston.

Wow. What a day I had…

After etching my way out of bed, I ventured to Mplanet for a full day of listening and conversing with a load of decorated marketing professionals. On my arrival, a wholesome breakfast was served and it was a great chance to chat with others attending the event. Not too long into my breakfast, we were moved into the main hall where we sat to be enlightened by CEO of the AMA (American Marketing Association), Dennis Dunlap and COO of AT&T, Randall Stephenson.

Dennis’ speech was centered on the incontrovertible, emerging issues which are impacting the environment that marketing professionals must face, such as:

• Increased consumer control
• Market fragmentation
• The proliferation of new media channels
• Commoditization of products and services
• Globalization
• Profit chasing.

He also explained that new paradigms of thinking and strategies were quintessential to the success of organizations. The five strategies discussed were:

Start a Fire, then Carry a Torch.
Innovate then market it effectively.

Wear the Customer’s shoes, create a path for them.
Consumers are looking for a brand to satisfy their needs. They want a brand which will satisfy their needs for a statement, an experience, whatever. A company must know it’s customers inside out.

Measure with precision and prove your mettle.
To highlight the effect of marketing in an organization, you need to make use of effective metrics.

Run a sprint AND a marathon.
A company is in it for the short and long haul. This is particularly the case with public companies however it also applies to any business out there, especially those which require steady cash-flow.

Know who you are, create who you want to be.
Touted as the most pivotal strategy by Dennis, knowing who the company is and what it stands for is vital for growing the business into what you want it to be. Since organizations cannot change at the pace of the external environment, it’s critical that businesses integrate IT, Marketing and HR together to support this change.

Dennis’ speech set the tone for the rest of the event and Randall Stephenson carried this on well. He discussed the Three Screen Reality which marketers must grip.

• TV
• Cellphones
• Computers

This was discussed in relation to the new U-verse which integrates these three screens, via IP (internet protocol). They envision that with the new medium, they will be able to deliver targeted advertising and programming to viewers instantly and seamlessly between their ‘three screens’. He also stressed this as being important due to the need for the integration and proliferation of marketing communication throughout these channels as they are the way of the future.

After Randall’s spiel about U-verse and it’s relevance to future consumer trends, we had a short break and then I headed to listen to Larry Huston, VP of Procter & Gamble, talk about his model for innovation.

He advised us that the traditional model for innovation was outdated and the new model, the Connections Model, was a much more sustainable approach to fostering innovation. The following points were made:

• Conventionally, innovation requires marketers to converge what’s possible with consumer needs.
• Larry maintains that this approach is useful but to be most effective in this day and age, marketers must rely on making connections between companies and architect networks of suppliers, manufacturers, competitors and anyone else in your industry.
• For each business you need to identify and address the top 10 needs to be satisfied.
• Consider your marketing networks when looking to bring your innovation to life and deciding where it is possible to be done.
• Innovation must be re-created across the entire business and its touchpoints. You can integrate the innovation into all aspects of a company to deliver a holistic experience to consumers who will ultimately reward you with brand loyalty and advocacy.

For lunch they served a hearty assortment of salads, chicken, meat, marinated mushrooms and more (not the kind of food that makes you leave Mplanet early). Once more, this was another fine chance to chat with some marketers and to discuss with them, the topic of Social Media.

After filling my mind and body with food, I met up with fellow blogger (Who is also to thank for several of these photos which I have borrowed), Josh Hallett and we headed to Chris Anderson’s (Wired Magazine) and Jason Zajac’s (Yahoo!) forum session on The New Economy – Long Tail vs. 80/20.

The 80/20 rule in marketing, basically states that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. This is one of marketing’s fundamental rules, but now, due to the emerging media channels (such as those found on the Three Screens and blogs), customers are more informed and are using multiple information sources. Here’s a great article which illustrates the concept of the longtail.

Key notes which were brought up in this forum were:

• Bloggers are having a huge amount of influence in consumer decision making.
• Your business is what Google says your business is (and bloggers show that).
• People are searching for very specific things.
• It’s becoming necessary for businesses to gain control of this medium and generate positive word of mouth in the blogosphere.

Finishing up, Jason Zajac illustrated the value of social media (blogs and Flickr!), using his example of Nikon’s viral campaign. Then he and Chris Anderson answered some questions and gave out signed copies of Chris’ book called ‘The Long Tail’. I just can’t wait to ‘digg’ into this book… if you know what I mean.

Anyway, soon enough we were off again – now it was to see if I could learn something about Branding with SVP and VP, Jennifer Dorian and Katherine Johnson of the TBS and TNT television networks.

Unfortunately I didn’t find it as useful as the previous two sessions. It even appeared like they viewed the session as an opportunity to promote their TV networks as viable providers of mass advertising. What they did mention howver was indeed useful information, though:

Your brand needs to stand for something and stand out.

To stand for something you must:

• Discover what you stand for.
• Define what you stand for.
• Declare to your customers what you stand for
• Deliver what it is that you stand for.

To Stand out and become remarkable you must:

• Imprint upon people’s minds
• Create Associations with your brand name
• Build strategic relationships or use co-branding

Although this was my least favorite session, I still enjoyed it. Following this we walked back to the main hall for the evening’s networking session and cocktails (yes, they were free). This session was trailed by a Keynote address and the presentation of the Sheth award by Dennis Dunlap to Sam Palmisano, the CEO of IBM.

In amazing and inspiring speech by Sam, which was marked by a standing ovation, issues were highlighted, such as:

• Integrating the internal functions of global coporations (HR, Marketing, IT and Sales)
• Globalisation
• Innovation
• Collaboration

Sam re-iterated the fundamental significance of these key notes with regards to their implication to marketing professionals and organizations. The speech was potentially one of the most captivating and motivating speechs of the day and was well deserving of the crowd’s standing ovation.

If this is just the first half of the event, I can tell you guys now that I’m in for a hell of a show tomorrow! Anyway, I should get to bed now since I have an early start tomorrow.

Stay Tuned for more coverage…
Robert Kingston

Ps. Contrary to my post yesterday, it turns out that Ann Handley IS attending, and I recommend that you go and check out her blog.

I’ve been in Orlando FL, for a couple of days now, eagerly awaiting Mplanet 2006 – but today, I went there.

Held at the splendiferous Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort, I was greeted by Rachelle Lacroix from Fleishman, who gave me an exclusive Mplanet bag full of goodies. Everyone who received a bag, found to their surprise an Mplanet 2006 notebook, program schedule and (notably) a special pen – checkout the photos!

Here I am, about to regster and recieve my Press pass.

On collecting my Press pass, I was surprised with a bag of goodies.

This is the cool pen they gave us.

Since I don’t have a USB pen drive, this will come in handy - especially with all the supplementary materials which are stored on there.

As you can see from the photos, the pen has USB storage (256mb of space with supplementary materials taking up a bit over 100mb) built-in. Not only could the pen be used as a ‘pen drive’ but it also has the option to attach an LED/laser light (not included). Whilst this was all fine and dandy, it’ll make me extra skeptical as to whether the rest of the ‘unconference’ will be as glamorous.

After gathering my bag I ventured over to where the event sponsors were exhibiting. At the top of the elevator they had bottles of Evian water to wash down our ‘food for thought’. When I got to the hall where the sponsors were, I was actually surprised at how few people were there, considering that I had heard that 1200 people were attending. I visited a couple of sponsors (including Fed Ex whose Stall was ironically delayed) and collected some ‘food for thought’.

Unfortunately for me though, I fell ill and was disappointed that I had to leave early and miss out on meeting up with fellow blogger, Josh Hallet. I guess I’m not used to stomaching monster servings of fast food, day in day out for two and a half days straight. I’m feeling much better now and I’m eager as ever to see what will come about of the first real day at Mplanet 2006.

Be sure to also checkout the coverage of other bloggers attending the event such as Josh Hallet, Eric Kintz, Rootly and Garrett French.

Stay tuned, folks…
Robert Kingston

The kind folks at Fleishman-Hillard (A global communications consultancy) have invited me to cover the new and unique marketing event – Mplanet 2006. A world-class event organized chiefly by the AMA (American Marketing Association), with the help of various other marketing firms, including Fleishman. I’ll scour it from beginning to end (29 November to 1 December), right here on Small Business Branding.

I’ll be bringing you all the finest and freshest insight into marketing, as discovered by professionals from General Electric, Nokia, IBM, Best Buy and more than 1000 other marketing leaders.

The event will explore and dissect topics such as new media channels, innovation, future consumer trends, managing marketing in a changing economy, brand relevancy, B2B marketing and IMC. I’ll bring you the cream of the crop and distill away the jargon - bringing you only the most potent and practical advice for your enjoyment.

So, stay tuned for this exciting coverage by Small Business Branding.

Robert Kingston.

As much as we do our best to produce articles that help you grow your small business here at SmallBusinessBranding.com, it is difficult to know what specific problems you face.

So we thought - what can we do to find out what our readers are having problems with?

And then we thought - well we could ask them of course!

In order to provide the best tips and advice, which are directly applicable to your business, we have decided to look to you for the questions you need answering. We want to find out what YOU, the reader, want. Explain to us what problems you’re currently experiencing in your business, so we can offer you advice and guidance in overcoming them.

Best of all - if you send us a question we will answer it right here on our blog including links to and exposure for your business.

Several of the Small Business Branding team have volunteered to help out with answers to your questions, so you should not consider any problem too difficult - we have the power of collective wisdom, experience and brainstorming to help you! It doesn’t matter if your business is online or offline, in start-up phase or well established, we are happy to help out.

We also open the opportunity for the greater community at this blog to answer via comments, so you really are receiving tailored advice from a range of sources.

How Can I Submit My Question?

Please leave your question as a comment in this thread or if you are too shy and want some privacy, write to us at: OFFER CLOSED

Please answer the following questions (the more info - the merrier):

• My business provides the following product/service:
• My biggest business problem at the moment is:
• I would like advice on how to:

Best Regards,

Robert, Brad, Danielle, Yaro, Kammie and Jeff.

What is distribution?

Distribution in the marketing world is an interesting term. It refers to the extent of your company’s reach, in terms of where you choose to promote your business, where people can buy your stuff from and even where your brand can be seen. Most business owners aim to up their distribution but often, they are unjustified in doing so. It’s a common belief that increasing your distribution can lead to more sales but like anything there comes a point where it becomes arduous for entrepreneurs to manage such a large-scale brand distribution. Do you follow?

I’ll give you an example – Say for a moment that you’re juggling 2 balls. When you increase it to three balls you need to put more concentration into following where those balls are going and if they are landing into your hands. When you add a fourth, you might be able to reach more customers, but you may not be able to deliver the ball to your hand in the right way. You are so focused on one ball that you totally ignore the other ball.

The same goes for managing your marketing and brand distribution – the more channels you use and people to please, the harder it is to deliver a consistent message to your most profitable target market.

Google-Like Consumer Brains

Another thing you need to take into account is a nice little theory we like to call “proximity influenced perception”. Yeah I know, ‘blah blah’, more marketing jargon. What this refers to is, that people make meaning from things which are close together. Much the same way in which search engines rank pages. Any SEO guru out there like Cristian or Yaro, will know that if you send enough of a certain type of text-link to a page on the internet, they will get Google-bombed and turn up in search results under bogus key terms. Our brains work in a similar way, in that if we see something close to another thing regularly, we associate them together. So if you continually see rave reviews about a local restaurant from established sources, you will begin to associate that restaurant with high quality.

My Advice

1. Don’t be everything to everyone
If you try and target everyone your brand will lose value. For instance, if you are a clothing designer and you want to target everyone then you might be scratching your head wondering why your most profitable target market of teens don’t find your brand ‘cool’ when they see ‘grannies’ wear it around.

2. Find out what your best assets are and how you can use them to become more attractive to your target market.
If you’re good at making shoes but you’re unable to market something – why do it yourself? Furthermore, if you’re a marketer and you want to start up a shoe business then you’ve been studying the wrong degree for a few years. You don’t go to your local Subway to buy website designs, nor should you offer something completely random and out of the picture from your brand unless it’s warranted.

3. Develop and convey a consistent and appropriate identity.
If you want to sell the most prestigious and classy tea cups in your country, then convey an identity which projects the image of a prestigious brand, like Mercedes. Do you ever see the homeless zipping around in a brand new SLK? Well, you only want to have the most prestigious people in town, using your tea cups. To do that you’ll also need your marketing to tell those people in a way which appeals to them.

4. Don’t risk de-valuing your brand through greater distribution if you don’t need to.
Avoid spamming at all costs and have a second thought about whether advertising your adult shop outside a kindergarten is appropriate. Spam at your own peril, your consumers are just more intelligent forms of Pavlov’s Dogs - build up a habit of spam and they’ll see all your marketing as spam.

5. Follow your goals.
Like with anything, goals give you directions and can guide you along a path to achieving them. If I go for a run without a goal in mind, what will I do? What is my purpose? I am not going to achieve anything if I don’t have a goal to achieve. Furthermore, I wouldn’t have a clear path to take. So, if your goal is to penetrate “X market by Y percent before Z” then you’ll have a clear path to take to achieve that goal. If you haven’t done so before, try setting some simple goals in your calendar – you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

Use this article as precautionary advice to the immense power of distribution in conveying your brand’s value to your customers. I understand if you don’t ‘get it’ at first but I know it’ll click when you see it happen in your own purchasing behaviour. As per usual, feel free to ask me anything or leave a comment below.

Best Regards,
Robert Kingston.

All you need to do is write to them about how your business could be more efficient in one of the following five areas:

• Finance
• Marketing
• Team Building
• Organization
• Technology

You’ve really got nothing to lose, so why not take a peek at it over here. If it’s not your cup of tea, then you can always take a look at the rest of their website to explore other small business owner’s problems and how they were fixed.

Good luck everyone!
Robert Kingston.