2014 Business Makeover: Free Branding Review

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January is the universal month for new resolutions and goals for the year. All over social media I keep seeing “New year, new me” statements and a lot of resolutions are related to appearance. So, I figured why not for businesses? Your business cannot physically work out or eat better (your employees can), but you can evaluate your appearance — your branding. So…I’m going to be your brand consultant in 2014, for free.

Free? No strings attached?

Yep, free and with no strings attached. You will not be added to my email list (unless you want to be), no obligation to use any of my design services, no catch. I will have you fill out a questionnaire so I can learn more about your goals, review what you have and give my recommendations. If you want to hire me to do what a recommend, awesome! If not, that’s ok, but at least you will have a roadmap for some things to do to improve your branding efforts.

What’s in it for me…and you?

For me, creating awareness. I will get you thinking about things you may not have been aware of before. Also, you might just hire me if you think I’m awesome enough (just being honest). For you, you have nothing to loose by having your brand reviewed, only knowledge/insight gained.

If you would like for me to take a look at what you have going on, fill out this quick contact form below:

Doing Something for the Benefit of Exposure May Not be Worth it

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Providing a service or product for free for exposure, or spending money on something for the sake of the exposure, is often a glamorous lie.  In most cases, exposure does not actually pay any bills and most bill collectors will not accept it as a form of payment.

I feel new businesses and up-starts fall prey to this more often than established businesses do.  The more established businesses may have already encountered a few glamorous exposure lies and new businesses are often targeted.  When I first started freelancing during my college years, I was approached a lot about doing graphics for free with the promise of the exposure it could bring me.  After I graduated, I moved to Atlanta and struggled to get my feet wet with my freelance business there.  Finding clients was my biggest hurdle.

Because I was still relatively new to not just the city, but also the industry, I was met with offers of designing, again for exposure, rather than a monetary payment.  Slim budgets, just needing something temporary or right now, were often the reasons given.  Having something I designed in front of lots of people, etc and/or having my name or logo listed and credited with the work would “expose” me and bring me more business.  At least, that is what I was often told.  I do believe that in some cases, the person pitching this to me really believed what they were saying.  I believed it to and ended up doing a lot of free work that did not net me a dime.

From a business standpoint, it was a loss.  What I do takes time and effort and I charge for that time and effort.  Doing it for free, was basically a donation to someone else’s dream and cause.  The reason why I did not net from the exposure is not because I didn’t do good work, but because the audience I was being “exposed” to, was not my demographic.  It was not the audience that would most likely use my services.  I highly doubt that someone received a club flyer and said, “Hmmm…although I am a struggling college student, I am going to hire the person who made this flyer to create my brand identity for the company I don’t have.”  I received exposure, but not to the right people.

It has been a long time since the last time that I was approached to do something for free, for exposure.  However, a few months back, I was pitched by the marketing department of a local news station to purchase advertising space on their website.  “It will be great exposure and put your brand in front of more people,” I was told by the marketer.  It sounded glamorous, and like something I might be interested in doing at first thought, but as I began to ask more questions; I realized that it wasn’t really that great.

I would receive a business page on their site and one web ad.  When I asked where the ad would be on their site, I was told it would be buried somewhere deep in an obscure part of their site.  Not their words of course, but the reality of where it would be in my eyes.  I asked if the traffic numbers he told me applied to that page…he did not know and needed to ask a supervisor.  The final answer was, no.  The business pages did not have those quoted traffic numbers either and the video that would appear would be hosted on their YouTube channel and not mine.  All in all, there was no value that I would gain by paying for this advertising.

It made me realize that although I was no longer being approached for free work in exchange for irrelevant exposure; I had reached the next level of being asked to pay for irrelevant exposure.  The glamorous lie was no longer free.

Have you ever been approached to provide a product or a service in exchange for exposure?  Did you benefit from the exposure?

Beyoncé:: No Promotion was Marketing

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Friday I woke up to a stream of Beyoncé photos and screenshots of her new album in my Instagram feed.  In case you had not heard or are not a fan of Beyoncé, she released a new album on Friday, December the 13th.  This came as a shock and a surprise to most people because up until it’s release, there had been absolutely no promotion.  I found myself answering some of the teasing questions that accompanied the photo’s.  “What, ya’ll didn’t know Bey dropped a new album?”  Why, no, I did not.

While I think that Beyoncé has a great voice, I would not necessarily consider myself to be a huge fan.  I like her, but more so because she is from Houston, TX, which is where I am from and Destiny’s Child came out while I still lived there.  My Texas pride causes me to support artists (no matter what genre) that hail from Texas.  For that reason, I have been a supporter.  However, I haven’t bought a Beyoncé album in many, many years.  I bought this one.  Why?  Because of the pure genius of it’s release and because I had enough iTunes gift credits to cover the purchase.

I predict that this will be one of her highest grossing albums.  I am going to assume that the production costs for this, a visual album, were much higher than her previous albums and one way to cover that cost was a slimmed down marketing budget.  The genius of her releasing this album is this:

  1. The shock value is a form of marketing.  It also appeals to people’s “I need it now, and I want to be current, on trend, and in the know.”  No one wants to be left out and everyone wants to get in and be a part of something that they see as an “epic move.”  They will do this by buying the album.
  2. The bold move makes people curious.  People like me buy it for that reason alone.
  3. It is exclusive to buy the full album now, because individual songs will not be available for purchase for 7 full days after this release.
  4. It’s the holiday season, perfect timing to capitalize on sales.
  5. Make the people market for you.  My Instagram feed demonstrates this.  I did not know about the album, but thanks to social media I do and I was curious.
  6. Make the media market for you.  The news media is all about staying current and on top of trends these days.  They use social media to find out what people are talking about and build news stories around them.

By not promoting this album beforehand, she has probably gotten the biggest marketing value for her money than she ever has in the past.

 

2014 Marketing/Business Predictions

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I thought I would jump on the 2014 prediction bandwagon with a few of my own.  I think that 2014 will see some interesting shifts not so much in the type of marketing that we are seeing now in the digital landscape, but how it is done.  To explain, I will start with my first prediction:

More Quality Content

Content Marketing has been the big buzzword this year and I think it will continue to be a large part of marketer’s strategies in 2014.  With the advent of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm, we will see an end to a focus on blog content that is irrelevant, keyword stuffed, unreadable, and created just for the sake of ranking high on search engines for traffic purposes.  Instead, we will see a high focus on more quality and relevant content.  I think this shift in focus, will lead to job growth in the writing arena, which leads me to my second prediction.

Freelance Writers will be in High Demand

I think we will see a boom in the writing industry.  As marketer’s look to provide more quality content, they will also use more copywriters, editors, etc to create and write this content.  I also think this is the next industry that will see a large growth in the number of “professionals” that can provide this content.  I think suddenly, everyone will be a “freelance copywriter.”  I feel the beginning stages of this have already started to happen.

Every time a new marketing trend pops up, there is suddenly a crop of “experts.”  Some truly are experts, but a lot are “experts.”  When social media marketing was the new buzz word, a new crop of social media marketers appeared.  Digital marketing…digital marketers.  SEO?  SEO experts popped up making claims of first page positions.  Now, we have content marketers, managers and curators and I fear we will see many more “experts” in 2014.  They will be joined by freelance writing “experts.”  Again, I believe that there are a lot of very real experts, but I think the “experts” give the real one’s a bad name.

So, there you have it.  My predictions for 2014.

Why is Marketing Important?

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why-marketing-is-important

The simple answer to why marketing is important, is that if no one knows that you exist, you do not really exist.  You can have the greatest product in the world, but if on one knows about it, it will not sell.  It is not enough to have a great idea or product.  It is not enough to have the latest and greatest infrastructure and equipment.  It is not enough to have a killer business model.  If you do not adequately invest and plan a marketing strategy to go along with your “awesome” business, it will not do well.

Yes, marketing costs money, but so does the business’ equipment, supplies, infrastructure, manpower, etc.  Marketing in my opinion, is a necessary business expense that should hold just as much importance and weight within an organization as inventory and supplies.  It is a necessity.  The statement that “you have to spend money, to make money,” is true.  However, most businesses take this to mean that statement applies to everything else, but marketing.  Often times, marketing is the last thing that a business thinks about or plans for when starting up.  I have heard it said plenty of times that a business needs to make money, before they can invest in marketing.  I disagree with this statement.  I believe that a business would actually make more money if they adequately planned and invested in their marketing efforts.

I believe that if you have a great product or service and you combine it with a great marketing strategy, the ROI is great.  Marketing is not just design (graphic, web, etc); it is research to determine who that customer is and how to target them.  Knowing who would be likely to buy your product or use your service, helps you determine where you should be marketing and how you should speak to them.  Marketing is messaging.  How does that target customer like to be spoken to?  Long form copy?  Bullet points?  Visual representations of ideas and messages?  Interactively?  Marketing is an experience created for the customer.  How do they like to engage with you?  Online?  Offline?  Copywriters, graphic designers, web designers and social media strategists, all help to convey this information in a way that will appeal to that customer.  It can get costly, but that cost can equate to higher profits and momentum to propel a business forward.

Marketing is very important if you want to be very successful.