The Credibility Branding Blog

The You In Your Brand

There is always an aspect of you in your brand and in your business process. Who you attract to you business as a partner customer or employee is a reflection of you. Look around your business right now. Take look at your employees and customers. What do they tell you about the personality of your brand? Are they empowered, are they needy, are they intelligent are they followers are they entrepreneurial? There is no judgment but there is insight here.

These constituents can tell you more about who and what your company is right now than just about ay other intelligence you can gather. Now do the same investigation of your competitor. Do they have a clientele and employee base that feels like it is more in alignment with your brand than your current constituents? Perhaps it is time to take a closer look at why that might be happening. How is your personal showing up in you company? Where can you be more authentic as a manager, partner and brand?

Is It Time To Go To The Next Level?

What tools are available to take your business to the next level? There are two in this post to explore…

I just finished a branding audit for Carolyn McCormick, and what is so great about this consulting process is hearing directly from customers their experience of my client’s products and services. The customers know better than you ever will how great (or not so great) your product is. The branding audit process get’s you that feedback and additional insights into what your customers are looking for. If you are interested in this process check out the overview of the different services I offer.

 

For example in the case of Carolyn what we discovered was not necessarily surprising but it confirmed many things. Now we are able to use the descriptors her customers offered to explain her services. When a company uses these dialogues to add this customer generated content to their messaging there is a new authenticity and trust tone that is added, and new sense of crediblity. It is a subtle but powerful.

I want to bring up Carolyn specifically because she is offering an upcoming business boot camp in mid June that is not to be missed. If you are an author or a speaker or trainer (or and aspiring one), she will walk you through the step-by-step process she has spent the last 20-years developing working for the biggest names in the industry. She worked with Tony Robbins for 8 years and has also worked on the inside with Mark Victor Hansen, Bob Procter and John Gray among many other luminaries. She has been there and done it, and is now passing along this insider knowledge to the rest of us… trust me, I will be there!

Carolyn is the “Tiffanies” of the coaching world. She is a business and life strategist who works with those that are truly committed to taking their businesses to the next level of influence, relevance and revenues. There really is no one on the planet that has her depth and breadth of expertise creating programs and business models for the greatest minds in speaking and training.

So… the other thing that happens when I do these branding audits (with the really good companies) is I am hooked and become a loyal customer in the process.

Two things to do today… consider attending Carolyn’s Business Boot Camp, and pursuing a brand audit. PS... If you mentioned I sent you you might get a price break!

Ok that was my commercial for the month <grin>.

Does Your Product Rotate?

I love finding the marketing meaning in something as simple as; sales changes if deserts rotate or not. Nathan Detroit bet on the type of deserts that where eaten in the musical Guys and Dolls. This particular Nathan is Nathan Dintenfass of The Venture Geek Blog who wrote about this in his March post. There is a fascination with deserts in just about all cultures… what can you add to your product and service that is the sweetener, the desert, to close the deal?

I think what this post also speaks to (beyond focusing on the details as Nathan lays out) is; what is the marketing opportunity. Where in your business is the “non-rotating desert” and how can you rotate it so more is visible to more of your customers? How can you display your products and services in the most appealing way (i.e. benefit statements; how you can change their lives) directed to the most number of relevant customers.

Thanks Nathan for getting us to consider things more carefully with this elegant analogy.

The Rotating Dessert Issue

March 31st, 2007 by Nathan Dintenfass - The Venture Geek Blog

I enjoy listening to This American Life. I don’t often get to it on a Saturday afternoon (when it’s on my local public radio station), but today I happened to catch it. It was all about the people who come in and out of a diner called The Golden Apple in Chicago over a 24-hour period. But, that’s not what this post is about.

No, this post is about rotating desserts. You see, on the day the This American Life crew was in the Golden Apple the dessert case that would normally be spinning desserts around and around was broken. You know, the kind of thing that looks like this:

So, yeah, it was broken — the desserts weren’t spinning. When the desserts weren’t spinning the Golden Apple sold 50% fewer desserts. Think about that for a moment. Take stationary desserts and start them rotating slowly and double your sales.

Why do I care about desserts, rotating or otherwise?

Because this is such a great lesson in why details matter. They matter in retail environments, and they matter in software — and from now on I think I will always think of that as “The Rotating Dessert Issue”. When I used to build custom web applications for a living we were constantly faced with clients looking at the “buy vs. build” decision. One of our strongest pitches was that off-the-shelf systems may get most of it right, but it’s the details that really end up mattering. Now, of course we had a vested interest in taking that stance, and there are plenty of good arguments against building custom software in many situations, but it doesn’t change the fact that details matter.

Click here to go to the source of this post.

G Cred, Social Media and Credibility Branding

John Follis a prolific advertising entrepreneur wrote a great article on G Cred (Google credibility) in his Art & Commerce column in Adweek (and quoted me no less).

This story is about Google as an increasingly important point of credibility.

The path to being included in the article is also part of the social media world and my credibility branding model. I found John’s blog The Follis Report through the great blogging social networking site MyBlogLog. I read his article which I re-posted on the Credibility Branding Blog in March, then let John know about it. He contacted me and we had several discussions about his G Cred theory. I offered a quote for an article he was writing and he was eventually able to use it here.

See, this stuff works J

Here is the article from Adweek; John offers an important marketing consideration…

Art & Commerce: Do We Have G Cred?
May 21, 2007
By John Follis

In this hype-happy, what-to-believe world, it comes down to a very basic, fundamental thing: credibility. How does one get it? How does one convincingly communicate it? And is there a Good Housekeeping Seal of the 21st century?

"Street cred" has been one recent barometric buzzword. Defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as "acceptability or popularity, especially among young people in urban areas," the legitimacy of street cred should not be minimized. As discussed in Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, the urban environment of street cred has been the birthplace of more than a few trends that have found their way into the mid-American mainstream. As true as that is, however, in today's high-speed cyberspace, street cred is … well … so 2005. There's a new cred in town, and it's called "G cred."

If you haven't guessed, the "G" is for Google. And while the term G cred may be new to you, it's been in the Urban Dictionary for over a year.

G cred (n.): Google credibility. What someone sees when they Google your name, business, product, organization or whatever. It's an increasingly important measure of legitimacy and how seriously someone will take you.

More than the cred of the day, G cred is the cred of the next decade. In her new book, The Credibility Factor, market communications strategist Jennifer McLean offers support for that claim: "While there are multiple forms of credibility found within a company or product, Google is playing an increasingly important role in the perception puzzle. The bottom line is: Credibility fosters trust, and Google is here to stay as a measure of that credibility."

As Google and the Web continue to mature, online visibility will equate to credibility on every level. It does now, through blogs and a myriad of social media sites that have become a respected, easily accessible and exponentially expanding source of cred. In short, word of mouth on steroids. What's important to realize in this Web 2.0 world is that G cred doesn't just apply to every business, product and organization. It also applies to every professional. And that's not a new thought. Respected marketing gurus like Tom Peters and Seth Godin have been preaching the value of building one's "personal brand" for years. Godin's Purple Cow champions the value of standing out and "being remarkable." Similarly, in The Brand You, Peters explains how career survival is not about blending in but about standing out:

"Regardless of age, position or the business we happen to be in, we need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You."

If that was true when Peters wrote it back in 1997, just imagine how true it is today. And that means visibility online. If you do a Google search on yourself and little comes up, or it's dated, well that's not good. If you happen to be someone in the marketing communications business and that happens, you'd better hope it's not your clients who are doing the searching.

As Google continues to rattle the cages of traditional media ("Google Gooses Big Media," Time, March 16), traditional agency execs had better start focusing more attention on the online model, regardless of their success at immediately monetizing it. In less than a decade, Google has gone from $0 to $3.1 billion in after-tax profits. With that, the new reality is that "nontraditional advertising" ain't so nontraditional anymore. Regardless of who wins this latest Clash of the Media Titans, I would venture to say that no media company, or ad agency, should expect to win long term if they don't fully understand and embrace the new rules of the game.

As much as this is sounding a lot like an ad for Google, it's not meant to be. I have no business or personal ties to Google, no direct or indirect company connections and, unfortunately, no Google stock. My point is simply that, as I hear a growing number of CEOs and business owners refer to advertising as "the A word," I've come to realize that it's no longer enough for agency execs to merely know about the curve. We'd best be ahead of it.

Got G cred?

Click here to read it from the source.

Leveraging Social Media for Competitive Research

This is great advice from Google Organic Blog in general also offering good specific tactics to perform competitive research. Building credibility means knowing what the competition is doing (and noticing what is working for them and what isn’t). The point of his article is research which is an underused tactic. Read and implement! (This is an excerpt of the full blog.)

Know thy market

Google Organic Blog

Sit back and ask yourself the following question;

How well do I know my market?

Hmmm, this is something that most will say they know very well, but do you really know it?

There was a time when I though I knew my market well. However after a few months I quickly realized that I was dead wrong.

Do you really know who your competitors are?

I have the luxury of reviewing current and future competitors because I also maintain a fairly good sized affiliate program. So knowing that I have the ability to review these sites regularly, I also have an advantage because I can do some competitive research on them.

Researching competition is VITAL. You have to know what they are doing, take what they are doing and see if it is working for them. If it is working for them, is it something that you are willing to take a risk on? If not, is there anything they are NOT doing that you could be to counter that? (*cough GET SOCIAL)

How can you quickly know what they are targeting?

Watch this and this for starters.

Keyword research

Ok, this is something that most already do, but how well you do it might need tweaking. Going after big money keywords is a great thing if you have a strong enough site with the right copy, but lets face it, not all sites were created equally and only THREE websites really matter organically, so if you place a huge emphasis on the best paying organic keyword and are not on page one, forget about it for a while and start looking for other keywords, like long tails.

Any natural web site is going to rank somewhere for something, knowing where you rank is important not only for the “Viagra” of your niche, but those long tail searches can be just as helpful. Not to mention that you should know what your competitors are targeting as well, they probably have some keywords that you never even thought of.

End of Excerpt

Click here for the rest of the post… it goes into some great content about the importance of web statistics

How Valuable is Your Blog? – Exploring The Points of Credibility

Dario D’Onofrio over at The Business Hackers Blog wrote a great article back in April about the value of your website. So why should you care? It is simply another point of credibility. Think of all the ways that your product could be more credible then highlight them through your marketing materials. It will different for select audiences. For example an audience of online marketers is going to very interested in how you rank and how valuable your site is. It has meaning to them in a way that instills trust. So Check out ways to figure this out through Darip’s post…

Estimate the value of your website in 5 minutes…

Posted on April 11, 2007
The Business Hackers Blog

Do you know how to find out if website A is worth more/less than website B. It is good to have some unbiased data that is easily available online. Those are some of the tools you might find useful:

· Google Pagerank Toolbar - checks your blog’s pagerank or how Google values your blog according to the number of inbound links that your blog has. The higher the pagerank the higher the blog value.

· Live Pagerank - checks your blog’s pagerank in all Google Datacenters.

· AlexaRank - ranks a blog according to traffic received. The lower the AlexaRank the higher the blog value.

· Technorati Rank - ranks a blog according to the number of blogs linking to it.

· Blog Juice Calculator - ranks a tool according to the number of BlogLines subscribers, Alexarank, Technorati Rank, and inbound links. The higher the blog juice, the higher the blog value.

· SEOMoz PageStrength SEO Tool - ranks a blog  according to its domain name’s age, DMOZ (open directory project) listing, inbound links, indexed pages from various search engines, etc.

· WeBuildPages Cool SEO Tool - it shows a blog’s placement for a certain keyword/phrase is searched.

 

Credibility Branding Through Thought Leadership

One of the most powerful strategies in a brand-building effort is a thought leadership program. This program involves executing tactics that position a person (spokesperson or sole entrepreneur) as an industry expert. It paves the way for a company to tap the industry mood and deliver high-level, thoughtful insights. Your product or company spokesperson is now positioned as the influencer. What better way to attract influencers than to be one? By being recognized as an expert, you raise the credibility bar yet again.

I have discussed previously  how product features alone just aren’t cutting it as the main asset of a marketing message. And as important as benefits (what pain are you solving?) are, companies and entrepreneurs sometimes need an even higher level of positioning. Being positioned by the industry as an innovator allows you to now become the commentator on industry trends and issues. Being an influencer brings the ability to shape the market trends directly. The other obvious benefit is recognition and instant credibility. As the thought leader (influencer), you are now positioning your product and your company as leaders by proxy.

Here is a short list of thought leadership programs

· High profile media relations (business publications high circulation mass consumer press and targeted vertical trade publications)

· Bylined and contributed articles

· Awards

· Speakers programs

· Newsletters

· Blogs

· Street teams / taste testing / bake offs

· Category creation

· Publicity stunts / video news releases

Sometimes to Sell the Aspirin, You’ve Got to Sell the Pain It Cures First

As mentioned previously, a very important piece of the messaging puzzle is to identify the benefits (as opposed to features and attributes). Another way to view benefits is to answer the question, “What pain are you solving?” If your company has not figured out what pain your customers are feeling, how is it able to deliver the cure?

Identifying the challenges and industry trends facing your customers is the first step in figuring out how your product addresses those challenges, as seen in the Messaging Timeline.

To offer an example, here are some of the trends in the media and entertainment space. As with most sectors, the challenges are diverse and complicated:

Trend 1 – Digital Convergence

Digital convergence was one of those hyped-up trends that promised to create new revenue streams for the media and entertainment industry while also driving down the cost of production and distribution. Reality was different; revenue growth has mostly come from acquisitions, and returns have actually declined.

Why? Fragmented media markets are certainly a cause. For example, the average audience per media property has been slowly decreasing and remains low, yet operating costs have grown.

Trend 2 – Wireless

With the recent launch of a $327 million satellite,

South Korea

and

Japan

have joined the race to allow users of handheld devices to receive satellite transmissions. This satellite broadcast conforms to the digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) standard,

South   Korea

’s proprietary standard.

South Korean and Japanese mobile phone and handheld computer users will be able to receive broadcast transmissions of news, sports, entertainment, and other programming. This migration of broadcast delivery to new users raises questions for broadcasters, including news directors, over how best to serve this niche.

In the

United States

, MobiTV, a specialist in the live streaming of television content delivered to mobile telephones, carried live television coverage of President Bush’s State of the Union address that could be watched on a cell phone.

Launched in November 2003, MobiTV is available through Sprint and AT&T/Cingular and will be on most carriers in the coming year.

While the technology is in its infancy, mobile entertainment and streaming television content to mobile telephones will become more common as 3G (third-generation) cell phones begin to appear. This provides network and local news operations with a powerful means of branding themselves and gives them new revenue streams to exploit, enabling the carrier to reap the benefits of increased ARPU (average revenue per user).

Trend 3 – Flexible Screens

FOLED, or flexible organic light emitting devices, is a technology that could one day be responsible for bendable TV, computer, and cell phone displays at home and potentially on the news set.

On a news set, bendable video displays could wrap gently around a wavy desk or be used in interesting ways in conjunction with real cycloramas and virtual sets. Or, imagine a reusable electronic newspaper that could download and display the day’s news and be rolled up after use.

Are you starting to get the idea? These trends are what the editorial community will be writing about and are also what your customers will be exploring. Your job is to fit your story, your vision into those trends. This is the top of the Credibility Pyramid and the first section of the Messaging Timeline, and it is of utmost importance as you create your story, form your messaging, and figure out what your customers care about.

Loyal Customers Hard To Shake

You have to try really hard to lose a loyal customer, that is according to Robert Passikoff and his “Rule of Six.” Once you have established credibility and loyalty with your customers, it doesn’t take much to keep them. So if you have heavy churn it is time to take a good hard look at what you are doing (six times no less) to lose em.

Following is an interesting take on customer loyalty By Media Post’s Marketing Daily’s Emily Burg…

Customer Loyalty Engagement Index Proves The 'Rule of Six'

Media Post’s Marketing Daily

by Emily Burg, Tuesday, May 1, 2007 5:00 AM ET

ROBERT PASSIKOFF, PRESIDENT OF BRAND Keys, Inc., has a theory he calls "the rule of six" that demonstrates the loyalty bond between a customer and a brand.

This year's airline category leader in the Brand Keys' Customer Loyalty Engagement Index--Jet Blue Airways--demonstrates not only that the tenets of the rule of six are true, but also that when it comes to customer expectations, often a customer's positive residual experience with a brand accounts for a lot of loyalty in otherwise disappointing situations.

"With the rule of six, a customer is six times more likely to give the product or service the benefit of the doubt, and that's what you see with JetBlue," Passikoff explained to Marketing Daily.

This comes despite JetBlue's recent customer service fumbles and weather woes that caused many airline industry analysts and frequent fliers to question the once customer-friendly airline's ability to maintain its favor among passengers.

Other elements of the rule of six are that the customer is six times more likely to:

· engage with the brand

· pay attention to ads and marketing

· think better of the brand

· buy the product again and again

· resist competitive appeals and price offers

· recommend the product or service to someone else

· invest in the company (if it's publicly traded)

Several other category leaders in the Brand Keys' Customer Loyalty Engagement Index show the veracity of Passikoff's rule of six theory, as well as the frequent disconnect between customer loyalty engagement and brand market leadership. On this list, ubiquity does not equal customer loyalty--although in the case of retail department store leader Macy's, a first-timer on the list, Federated's acquisition streak and rebranding of its purchases of Macy's stores made all the difference.

"I was one of the people that said Federated was going be great and people nay-sayed me," Passikoff said. "The minute they rebranded their stores as Macy's, they had a built-in audience. More people were mentioning the Macy's brand, and Macy's had been fine-tuning the shopping experience for over 100 years, plus they brought the reputation as the biggest store in the world, the owners of the Thanksgiving Day Parade and Santa Claus with them. That's what does it for them."

In the coffee category, Starbucks lost to Dunkin' Donuts--the first time in five years the brand didn't come in first place. "It's not surprising, given the trade-off they've done over the past 18 months for in-store experience," Passikoff said. "Starbucks can come back but even [Chairman Howard] Schultz himself has said they traded their brand equity for vacuum-packed bags of coffee.

"In the meantime, Dunkin' Donuts has come up from behind, and their past few years of brand efforts have been right on and resonating with what people are looking for," Passikoff said.

Toyota, whose Scion brand ranked No. 1 in a recent e-commerce survey, led the automotive category. "In the automotive category, reliability is high for customers so it makes sense why Toyota and Mercedes [tied with BMW for #2] is high," Passikoff explained. "But when you see that General Motors is at the bottom of the list [at #10], that tells you a lot about how people are looking at that brand. Their cars are just as reliable as Toyotas."

GM and Gap, which ranked at the bottom of the retail stores/apparel category (H&M/Victoria's Secret tied for #1), have become category placeholders, according to Passikoff. They have ubiquitous distribution and pricing and little else associated with their brands at this point.

"If your brand is going to engage someone, what does it stand for? There has to be a foundation for an emotional bond to be established," he said.

Emily Burg can be reached via email at emily@mediapost.com

To read the post from the source Click here

Press Landscape – Your Best Credibility Marketing Research Tool

The press landscape is a tool I use to create a map of exactly what the editorial community is covering. The idea is to conduct some basic research to map out what publications are writing about in relation to your product or industry. The key findings you are looking for include the following:

· What exactly are publications writing about similar products in the market? How are they being covered—the good and the bad?

· What are editors saying about the industry as a whole? This will give you hints as to what your messaging should be when approaching these editors.

· How are editors covering competitors? What are they saying about them? Are they believing your competitors’ messaging? (Review a competitor’s recent press release and then review the coverage it received.)

· Who are these editors using as press references? For example, who is being quoted in the article? This will assist you in identifying key influencers to pursue; if the editorial community is using them as a reference then they already have influence.

The press landscape is one of the most important research tools a marketer has at hand, but it is frequently forgotten. What better way to find the pulse of the market than through what the media are covering? The press landscape can also help you formulate your messages. The way an editor hears your story or the stories of your competitors and writes about that gives you a clue as to how he or she perceives you and the sector and what the editor perceives his or her audience will care about. Publications do a great deal of research on what their audiences want to read. Don’t reinvent the wheel and make assumptions about what customers are focusing on; use magazines and editors as barometers of industry trends to assist you in forming messaging and creating strategies and tactics that are relevant and will be embraced.