Brand Quarterly Issue 15

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OVER HERE!

Create a brand that attracts AND keeps customers

ISSUE #15 5 Ways Your Traditional Business Can Thrive In The Social Age Influencers And Content: Digital Marketing’s Perfect Storm How Do We Measure The Value Our Marketing Creates?

Protecting Your Brand - Even From Yourself Is Your Brand A Zombie? ...and much more inside.

Also Featured In This Issue:

4 The Way You Think About Business Needs A Revolution

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Protecting Your Brand Even From Yourself

Is Your Brand Still Breathing?

Andrew Vesey

Jeffrey Hayzlett

Josh Allan Dykstra

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5 Ways Your Traditional Business Can Thrive In The Social Age

Influencers And Content: Digital Marketing’s Perfect Storm

How In The World Do We Measure The Value Our Marketing Creates?

Mark Babbitt

Lee Odden

Daniel Newman

28 Do Your Customers Know Your Brand Promise?

32 Is Your Brand A Zombie?

Kristof De Wulf

Would They Say You Keep It?

More Popular Articles On BrandQuarterly.com

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5 Steps To Empower Others How To Lead Well During To Think More Creatively Times Of Change Marcia Reynolds, PsyD, MCC

Distribution Channel Management – Walking The Tightrope Andressa Chapman

Shep Hyken

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Building Your Business From The Brand Up

Karin Hurt

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Why Personal Branding Sucks ( And Is Bad )

The Customer Journey In The Social Media Era

Ed Zitron

Jeff Sheehan

Use This Simple Button To Come Back Here Anytime At the top right of page spreads

From The Editor Hey You! Over Here! Yes, that’s right, over here...

A primetime radio host sharing insights from Gene Simmons, Barbara Corcoran and Kevin Jonas, right through to highly respected experts discussing creativity, leadership, ROI, customer service, influencers, tightropes, guardians and zombies - yes, even zombies! That’s what’s in store for you within this issue’s digital pages - and more... We’re honoured to have so many fantastic industry thought leaders sharing their knowledge through our pages, and thank each of them for their time and generosity.

We’re also excited to be welcoming BrandMaker, a leading provider of marketing resource management systems, on-board as our newest Brand Benefactor - I would like to thank them for their support and look forward to collaborating with them over the coming year.

Speaking of the coming year - what else do we have up our sleeves? Well, some of it’s top secret, sorry. But I can tell you to expect another ‘Global Marketing Special Edition’ this July, in partnership with Brand2Global. Andrew and I will be at this years Brand2Global conference (Sept 30 - Oct 1, London) so be sure say “Hi” if you’re coming along too, we love meeting our readers in person.

If you can’t be in London for Brand2Global, or you don’t want to wait that long to get in touch, let’s connect on Twitter @BrandQuarterly and/or LinkedIn. The future of Brand Quarterly is being shaped by your feedback, so come join the conversation and make this magazine, your magazine.

Enjoy this issue… As always, if you love it, share the love - and watch out for zombies :) Cheers,

Brand Quarterly magazine ISSUE #15 - Published MAY 2015 www.brandquarterly.com Publisher/Design: Vesey Creative Ltd brandquarterly@veseycreative.com

As the publishers of Brand Quarterly, we take every care in the production of each issue. We are however, not liable for any editorial error, omission, mistake or typographical error.

The views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of their respective companies or the publisher.

Brand Quarterly

Fiona

Copyright: This magazine and the content published within are subject to copyright held by the publisher, with individual articles remaining copyright to the named contributor.

Express written permission of the publisher and contributor must be acquired for reproduction.

The Way You Think About Business Needs A Revolution Josh Allan Dykstra

We have been thinking about culture entirely backwards. A company’s culture is more than just the fun you have at your office, it’s actually made of a huge melting pot of mostly invisible things.

It’s time to think differently…

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Stroll into the headquarters of most large organizations these days and you’ll find all sorts of interesting things - ping pong tables, free drinks, laundry service, paid sabbaticals, free snacks, dogs in the office, nap rooms, coffee shops, rock climbing walls, beer on tap, free gym memberships, and if you’re really lucky, an enormous silver swirly slide between floor levels in the cafeteria (yes, seriously).

Many times, we see all these phenomenal perks from the outside and think, “Wow, what a great culture! It must be amazing to work in a place like that.” And to an extent, this sentiment is true: workplaces with crazy awesome perks are often reasonably good places to work.

But it’s not the perks that make them great.

It’s the great that makes the perks.

We have been thinking about culture entirely backwards. We’ve confused causes with effects and means with ends. We see amazingly fun things like billiard tables, organic food, and arcade games and we find ourselves (quite naturally) pulled into the deceptive illusion of association; we think “fun stuff” equals culture because it’s so, well, fun, and more importantly, because we can see it. But just like the culture of a nation or city, a company’s culture is actually made of a huge melting pot of mostly invisible things - things like shared values, accepted practices, and common language.

For most of us, it’s just easier to talk about what we can see instead of those other, more hidden things.

But here’s the problem with that - if you’d like your business to truly leverage the power of its culture, focusing on the visible perks will never be enough.

Instead, we need to start thinking about business in an entirely new way.

I used the word “revolution” quite deliberately in the title of this article, not because I want to conjure up bloody images of violent uprising, but because the literal meaning of revolution means to “turn around” - as in the earth does a complete ‘revolution’ around the sun once a year.

When it comes to how we think about business, we need to quite literally flip our thinking; we need to turn it around.

When it comes to how we think about business, we need to quite literally flip our thinking For a long time, we’ve been thinking about business in a mostly coercive way.

We believe we have to convince people to come work for us, so we devise competitive salary and benefit packages. Once they’re in the door we think we have to compel them to stay, so we create incentive plans and maybe even “golden handcuffs” for the super-talented people. We then perceive a need to persuade potential customers into buying our product or service, so we create foolproof marketing plans and clever advertising.

When we think of our businesses in this way, almost every action we take is from a defensive position, from a perspective of scarcity. Our mindset is one of constantly trying to persuade people to do things (we assume) they really don’t want to do.

This approach isn’t effective in the emerging economy, however, because it completely erodes our culture. A scarcity mindset doesn’t create an environment that builds shared values, accepted practices, and common language around the things people want to be a part of - instead, it does the opposite, repelling people from your brand, subtly and slowly rotting your business from the inside out.

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So what would happen if we thought about business from a perspective of abundance instead?

I suspect we would stop trying to convince the right people to work with us, and instead focus that energy into the product or service we’re building. When we do business this way, we attract the passionate talent we need who join out of love for what we’re doing.

I suspect we would stop focusing on incentives and start building creative ways to help our employees leverage their unique strengths more frequently at work. When we do business this way, we naturally boost engagement and retention, and people stay because their deepest needs are being met.

I suspect we would stop obsessing over marketing messages and instead find new, interesting ways to appreciate and value our customers. When we do business this way, we foster intense loyalty, turning clients into passionate brand ambassadors who do our marketing for us!

In my book, Igniting the Invisible Tribe, I show how the successful future of business is all about flipping our thinking. Essentially, there are “invisible tribes” of people forming all over the planet who care deeply about doing

There are “invisible tribes” of people forming all over the planet

something they are passionate about - we know this, because even if we’re interested in collecting the most obscure, esoteric object imaginable, we can find a website devoted to it! Social technologies are connecting us in ways we couldn’t even imagine a decade ago, accelerating and amplifying the growth of tribes all around us.

If you’d like to truly leverage the power of culture in your organization, here’s the question I’d ask you to ponder: What if you were able to find these invisible tribes and give them a great place to work on what they are most passionate about?

What if your organization became a place - a “container” of sorts - that provided just enough structure and guidance for people to gather and work on something deeply meaningful to them? What if it was a place that utilized each person’s energizing strengths in deliberate ways? What if it was a place that actually helped people become the best version of themselves?

This is why culture is so terribly difficult to understand, and why things like swirly slides and rock climbing walls could never be culture. Real, performance-enhancing culture is something that blooms from the organizations and leaders who can create a true revolution in their thinking, taking almost everything they thought they knew about business… and turning it around.

Josh Allan Dykstra Co-CEO | Forte, Co-Founder | The Work Revolution A recognized thought leader on the future of work and company culture design, Josh has featured in Fast Company, Forbes, The Huffington Post, and Business Insider. He is the CoCEO of Forte, a consulting group that helps organizations and leaders leverage the power of a strong culture, and Co-Founder of The Work Revolution, which promotes life-giving work environments for everyone. Josh’s eclectic background includes projects with Apple, Sony, Genentech, Microsoft, HTC, and UCLA as well as startups and nonprofits. He holds an MBA in Executive Leadership from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and his book, Igniting the Invisible Tribe: Designing An Organization That Doesn’t Suck, is available on Amazon.com.

www.invisibletribebook.com 6

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

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Brand Quarterly

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Protecting Your Brand Even From Yourself Andrew Vesey

You’ve invested untold hours and most likely a sizeable portion of your budget into creating a brand that looks great and speaks directly to your target audience. So don’t let a lack of consistency derail you from the path to long-term success.

One of, if not the biggest threat to the continued success of a brand is lack of consistency. Consistency in delivering on your brand promise and consistency in how your brand is presented to the market.

Companies that are looking for an advantage will make sure they have quality assurance systems in place, to make sure their products and services are delivered at the highest possible standards. This same sort of QA effort should be made with your brand and how it is delivered to the marketplace.

Your brand needs consistency, it needs protection, it needs a guardian…

Depending on the scale of your business, the resources at your disposal and the volume of brand work produced, your ‘Brand Guardian’ may be a single person (full time or split role), or it could be an entire team of guardians. They may operate from emails and printed proofs or with the latest and greatest brand management software. For this article, I’ll just refer to them in the singular to avoid any confusion and ‘is it relevant for me?’ uncertainty.

How can I do this? Simple. Whatever the size and brand QA requirements of your business, the logic and methodologies are basically the same. It’s just a matter of scale and systems.

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When it comes to brand consistency, if everyone’s responsible – no one’s responsible

The Guardian At The Gate When it comes to brand consistency, if everyone’s responsible – no one’s responsible.

You need to have someone who has ultimate responsibility over ensuring everything that represents your brand, does so in the best possible light. It is not necessarily their job to produce your brand collateral, but it is their job to approve it; to be the gateway between your brand and the marketplace. Everything should pass their watchful eyes and anything detrimental to your brand should be met with a “You shall not pass!”

Armed with the right tools and with the right systems in place, a brand guardian will strengthen your brand, and believe it or not, save you money, improve brand ROI and yes – even speed up brand implementation and agility. Crazy – but true.

People often talk about employee advocacy within the marketing sphere (mainly in regards to social media) and top brand and business experts are always telling you to work on engaging your employees and getting their buy-in into your programs, products and services.

Just as with employee advocacy and engagement, we are talking about developing a (relatively simple) program to enable your nominated guardian to facilitate a consistent AND time efficient brand QA experience.

Set The Rules Of The Game I have no idea how many times I’ve said this, but I’ll say it again (and again, and again) – Brand Manuals Are For Everyone.

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Typically thought of as a requirement for big business only, the fact is that brand manuals or guidelines are just as important for SMEs and even micro-businesses. The smaller your business, the more likely you are to outsource your brand and marketing work to others.

Magazine or newspaper design services, web companies, sign companies, multiple graphic design services. This creates a major strain on your QA facilities; especially as there is a good chance the above companies will use different designers to produce your work at different times.

Arming your guardian with a brand manual that clearly defines what should be done, will provide them the raw materials needed to start acting as gatekeeper. Also including simple explanations on why things are done a certain way, will help to improve the effectiveness of your guardianship program even more. Once people understand, they find it much easier to absorb and remember – and in turn, act appropriately on the information given.

It’s OK To Bend The Rules A good brand manual educates people what they CAN do, rather than telling them what they CAN’T. You will want to create – clearly labelled – alternative options for your various brand elements and designs. These can be in the brand manual proper, or in a super secret, special edition, for your eyes only, ‘Guardian Manual’. Creating these as a companion to the manual proper means your guardian can be up with the play on what can be done if needed, while those producing the brand work are kept on the straight and narrow, doing everything they can to stay ‘on brand’.

A good brand manual educates people what they CAN do, rather than telling them what they CAN’T

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

Control and compliance are important, but so are acceptance and ownership. Without these added options, you run the risk of running the ship a bit too tight – and we all know what happens when the crew get pushed too far.

you gauge a potential guardian’s comfort level, and make it easier for them with your support. Knowing they have management’s full support is key to arming your guardian for success.

It’s ok to bend the rules – just not too much.

Choosing Your Guardian Knowledge of branding; knowledge of design; knowledge or marketing. While these are obviously desirable traits for a brand guardian to have, in reality, they come second to an eye for detail, courage and an understanding of YOUR brand.

Just because someone knows about branding, design or marketing, it doesn’t instantly make them the perfect choice for a guardian. While definitely a plus, the job of your guardian is actually to act in a quality assurance role, within the very clear guidelines you have set out for them. So while a brand background may help them assimilate your brand manual faster, as long as they understand the specific rules, regulations and adaptations of your specific brand, your guardian will do well.

Now, I know you’re thinking courage is a strange trait to be asking for, but think about it. Your brand guardian has to have the courage to say NO to people who out rank them – sometimes by a lot. This isn’t easy for a lot of people to do. So make sure

Why not just make management responsible for the brand’s guardianship? Well, for starters, they’ll have plenty of other things on their plate. And from my own experiences, it’s quite often those managers who like to do things their own way or make ‘minor improvements’ along the way (you know who you are J).

This is the case, even in my own business.

Yes, I created the Vesey Creative and Brand Quarterly brands and I am involved in producing all of our own materials, but you won’t find me on the brand guardian roster.

While I act as a guardian for other brands, I know I’m just too close to our own brand to be effective.

Call it an investment, call it insurance, call it brand QA, call it Brand Guardianship like I do – call it whatever you like. Implementing a program to monitor and guarantee the consistency and quality of how your brand is presented to the market is something that every business – big and small – can do to take great strides towards a stronger brand and even an extended brand lifecycle.

Andrew Vesey Chief BrandMan, Founder | Vesey Creative & Brand Quarterly Andrew is an experienced brand and marketing professional with over 15 years in the industry - a majority of those have been as the Chief BrandMan at Vesey Creative, which he co-founded in 2003. In 2011, driven by his passion for branding, business and education, Andrew made the move into publishing by launching Brand Quarterly - this very magazine - and in 2014 Brand Quarterly Online. When not writing or developing partnerships and new initiatives for Brand Quarterly, Andrew works with a select number of clients - spanning the globe, from New Zealand through to the United Kingdom and the United States - developing, refreshing and implementing brands for both products and companies.

www.veseycreative.com

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Is Your Brand Still Breathing?

Jeffrey Hayzlett

As leaders, occasionally we need to conduct what I call mirror tests to see if our brands are still breathing.

A mirror test is nothing more than placing a mirror near your mouth and nose. When you exhale, the mirror fogs. The mirror test is proof of life.

You’re breathing; you’re alive.

When was the last time you performed a mirror test on your business? How do you know if it’s still alive and breathing?

Instead of a mirror, we utilize metrics and data. Is your business still growing? Are you reaching your goals and making money? Good news! Your business has passed its proverbial mirror test. However, if you’re making money and not growing, or vice versa – you may want to check that mirror again. Chances are, your business has stopped breathing.

Businesses continue to pass the mirror test because they continue to be innovative. To stop means stalling progress, and as c-suite leaders, we can’t allow that! We must think big and act bigger. It’s imperative to the future of our business.

To stop means stalling progress, and as c-suite leaders, we can’t allow that!

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Recently, I interviewed on my podcast, All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett, a number of household names that have taken their own brands to the next level.

One person who is continually thinking big and acting bigger is KISS legend himself, Gene Simmons, a man who started his entrepreneurial journey at a very young age, and hasn’t stopped yet. At six years old, he was traversing the hills in Israel picking cactus to sell to the people after they would leave work. He has been taking that same relentless passion for business and for 40 years has helped build KISS into a worldwide brand. With over 3,000 KISS-licensed products, Simmons is continually innovating the brand to stay relevant, grow profitably, and pass the mirror test day in and day out.

The question is, after 40 years and 3,000 products, how does he keep going? Simmons says, “Complacency, and other big words like gymnasium, makes you lose your edge. And once you've lost it, you may never get it back.

Unlike the phrase, something to do with riding a bicycle, in the real world, that does not apply”.

Simmons goes on to add, “In the real world, you will have to stay on your toes, because the public has the attention span of gnats. And keeping a brand vibrant, means being one step ahead of the public. A little bit of love. A little bit of the right thing. And a little bit of the right place. All of those are important pieces of the puzzle of branding”.

Brands need to stay on their toes and one step ahead of their customers And Simmons is absolutely right. Brands need to stay on their toes and one step ahead of their customers; they have to be persistent and innovative in order to continue being relevant.

Another prime example of someone continually passing the mirror test and relentlessly driving their business, and the business of others, is ABC’s Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran. She discussed with me her story of growing up a D-student to owning a multi-million dollar empire. Pluck, gumption, street smarts, and a competitive and innovative spirit has helped Corcoran buy, invest, and sell businesses and expand her career.

“I realized that without constant innovation, I couldn’t become the leader of my industry.

So innovation was necessary, as I planned to win”, Corcoran shared when asked how her persistence and push for innovation has helped her succeed. She added, “What you get for innovating is enthusiastic employees very eager to contribute and be part of the fun.

Money doesn’t buy that”.

And Corcoran is absolutely right. Building loyalty within your company takes more than just money; it takes building a culture of constant innovation. As leaders, we must

Jeffrey Hayzlett Author, Primetime TV and Radio Host, Chairman | C-Suite Network Jeffrey Hayzlett is a primetime television and radio host of C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett and Executive Perspectives on C-Suite TV and All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett on CBS ondemand radio network Play.It. Hayzlett is a global business celebrity, speaker, best-selling author, and Chairman of C-Suite Network, home of the world’s most powerful network of C-Suite leaders. Connect with Hayzlett on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+.

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Building Your Business From The Brand Up

push our employees to think big and act bigger, to not let self-imposed excuses or limitations hold them back. By turning the mirror onto others, Corcoran is instilling the sense of responsibility and ownership to her employees, so they can feel the pulse of the business.

As we grow within our careers and personal lives, there are plenty of opportunities to let success run to our heads – blinding us to whether or not we’re continuing to pass the mirror test. Kevin Jonas, former member of The Jonas Brothers turned entrepreneur, knows that all too well. When I spoke to Jonas he shared with me an insightful quote his father always shared with him and his brothers: “My father taught us something from very early on. He said if you’re at the top, live like you’re at the bottom. A simple statement that went a

long way, and we lived by it”, Jonas said. While not your typical mirror test, it is certainly a reality check.

Jonas went on to discuss that, although there were a couple things in the media here or there, they were kids growing up, “But we really were so focused on being the best we could be that we didn’t care”.

As c-suite executives, it’s critical that we keep our heads on straight. It’s one thing to think big and act bigger; it’s another to do it intelligently. By staying on your toes, utilizing your weaknesses as your strengths, and keeping a level head in business, we as executives will be able to pass our mirror tests, both personally and professionally, at every opportunity.

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www.brandquarterly.comBrand Quarterly

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5 Ways Your Traditional Business Can Thrive In The Social Age Mark Babbitt

The Social Age has hit the corporate world hard and fast. In just a few years, we’ve seen a tremendous shift in how businesses – and the executives who run them – communicate, create, serve and lead.

So how do traditional businesses keep up?

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How do well-established brands – still highly relevant yet perhaps a bit slow to react to the social tsunami coming at them – go from Industrial Age hierarchies to Social Age contenders? And how do executives unlearn everything they know about leading to become truly social leaders?

To help answer those questions, let’s explore the characteristics of those traditional companies already thriving in the Social Age:

They Understand Social Is A Mindset Far too many old-school organizations – and their leaders – believe being “social” is all about tweeting on Twitter, friending on Facebook and pinning on Pinterest. They don’t realize that social isn’t one of these tools; that the Social Age can’t be defined by a platform or technology.

Instead, social is a mindset.

Social is how we listen, collaborate, innovate and compete. It is how we present ourselves, both online and in person. Social is about engaging with our stakeholders – including our customers and employees – instead of talking at them. Most important, social is understanding that those same customers and employees are talking about you and your brand… whether you’re listening, or not.

Social is how we listen, collaborate, innovate and compete

They Deliberately Create An OPEN Culture From my book ‘A World Gone Social’, “OPEN” is an acronym for “Ordinary People | Extraordinary Network.”

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OPEN enables even the most old-school organization to reconsider how problems are solved and challenges are faced. It means stakeholders – customers, employees, vendors, even competitors – can offer input that leads to innovative solutions. Simply put, OPEN means getting the right people, in the right room, at the right time – regardless of title, experience level or perceived level of power.

By breaking down the hierarchal barriers of communication – and having a member of the assembly line sitting at the same table as the CEO – answers and real-world insights come much faster. As author Liz Wiseman points out in ‘Rookie Smarts’, every employee has the potential to be a huge contributor. An OPEN culture that values these contributions – from the top-down – wins.

They Have A “Face” On Social Not every established organization has a charismatic leader like Arianna Huffington, Richard Branson or Elon Musk. But they do consistently present a “face of the company” on social media platforms. Ideally, yes, the face is that of the CEO or Founder; however, attempts to force an unsocial executive to be likeable on social media – for too many companies – has proved disastrous.

The goal here is simple: present a passionate member of the executive or support team as your company’s brand ambassador. Perhaps a digital native, this brand ambassador appears on Twitter chats, participates in LinkedIn groups, is a frequent guest on mission-relevant podcasts and hangouts.

And with every appearance, the social face of your company is building credibility and awareness of your brand.

Present a passionate member of the executive or support team as your company’s brand ambassador

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

the gates of the castle to be stormed. Just ask Mike Jeffries of Abercrombie & Fitch and Desmond Hague of Centerplate.

Make a mistake? No problem.

Own it, whatever “it” is.

They Find Their Inner Nimble They Demonstrate Social Responsibility Prior to the Social Age, being an autocratic leader was considered normal. In business school, from our mentors – even our parents – leaders were firm, decisive and confident.

Too often in that environment, profits mattered far more than people.

Today, however, business leaders are expected to care more – to be more human; more social. They are expected to look at the big picture versus short-term profits. And they – or their social surrogates, the face of the company – are expected to be sincere, approachable and even vulnerable.

Make a mistake? No problem. Own it, whatever “it” is. Endeavor to fix the problem with all due humility and sincerity. And over time most, if not all, is forgiven.

Ignore that mistake, however, or blame others? Worse yet, rely on the public relations and legal teams to “spin” the situation and deny responsibility as corporations did for decades? Then get ready for the social media lynch mobs to form… and prepare for

When innovation seems to be happening with an unprecedented sense of urgency – and new products are coming to market as fast as we can fire up our 3D printers – organizations must find their inner nimble.

Fat must be trimmed. Layers of management must be absorbed. Attrition must be considered a traditional business’ best friend. Tough conversations with previously productive employees must be had. Divas, drama queens and trolls must be shown the door.

And just as important, new talent – attracted to your business by the OPEN culture, a clear display of social responsibility and a sincere online presence – must be hired, in part, due to their social mindset and their ability to contribute to an optimistic workplace.

By becoming agile from the top down, many traditional organizations are finding life; new passion. They have found new purpose – and are creating and competing again.

And they are thriving in the Social Age.

Mark Babbitt Author, CEO and Founder | YouTern Mark Babbitt is the co-author of A World Gone Social: How Companies Must Adapt to Survive.

He’s also the CEO of YouTern, an award-winning social community for young professionals, and President of Switch and Shift which advocates social leadership and the deliberate creation of an optimistic workplace. An in-demand facilitator, mentor and speaker, Mark was recently named to Inc.’s “100 Great Leaderships Speakers” and to Business News Daily’s “Top Entrepreneurs to Follow on Twitter.” In addition to Brand Quarterly, Mark contributes to HBR, Inc., and Huffington Post. Mark is the father of five; he and his wife call Seattle home.

www.aworldgonesocial.com

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Influencers And Content: Digital Marketing’s Perfect Storm Lee Odden

With ubiquitous internet connectivity and billions of people empowered to create and publish online, digital marketing competition is greater than ever. Companies are increasingly challenged to create quality content that can stand out, to attract and engage new customers.

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Building Your Business From The Brand Up

There’s more to influencer marketing than advocacy and all influencers are not created equal

But there’s more to influencer marketing than advocacy and all influencers are not created equal. With participation marketing, companies can take a view of working with influencers of different types to produce a variety of benefits - all through content.

What kind of benefits?

How can businesses grow their reach and improve content quality in such a market?

Through ‘participation marketing’ with industry influencers.

In recent times, the expression “influencer marketing” has exploded in popularity and many marketing communications professionals are continuing to see influencers in the light of “celebrity endorsements”.

The investment in co-creation of content between brands and influencers enables quality content at scale. With brands and influencers working together, co-created content can reinforce mutual authority for all involved. In such a cooperative scenario, influencers can gain exposure, brands can reach new audiences, and customers are “info-tained” and inspired to engage.

Everybody wins.

Establishing an influencer content program requires a framework for identifying, engaging, and managing relationships.

Here's a five step approach to do just that.

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1. Set Marketing And Influencer Goals

3. Find, Qualify And Recruit Influencers

In order for co-created content to be successful for marketing, specific audiences and goals should be identified.

Beyond the famous “brandividual” influencers in your industry, consider niche experts that have an active and passionate following. Also consider subject matter experts within your own company.

Think about: What do you hope to achieve with an influencer content program? How will influencers benefit? More importantly, how will customers benefit?

Think about the distinct audience that you’re after with the content being co-created and set goals specific to what your idea of success looks like. Quantify those goals as well, whether it’s to increase the reach and engagement of your brand to the influencer’s community or to inspire more leads and sales by a certain percentage.

Also, set goals for the influencers. For short term projects, focus on participation quality.

With longer term ones, focus on participation, marketing outcomes and the relationship.

2. Pick Your Themes You can start by asking, “What does your brand want to be known for?”

Themes facilitate planning content and also serve to focus the sourcing of the right influencers. Themes that are meaningful to all parties involved: brand, influencer and target audience will be far more successful.

Beyond branding goals, themes in cocreated content programs are often driven by key customer questions that can be answered by brand marketing. Looking at distinct customer segments and the buying experience at each stage should reveal the themes and triggers that your content program will focus on.

Consider what questions your customers are asking at awareness, consideration and purchase stages. Then think about the themes that will drive asking and answering those questions through influencer content.

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To start, talk to executives, marketing, PR and sales to identify a seed list of influencers.

Then use an influencer discovery tool like Traackr or BuzzSumo to filter them out and add new influencers your team didn’t know about. Results are better when influencer matches are found on more than one tool.

When reaching out to influencers, be sure to accentuate the positive and the mutual value

When reaching out to influencers, be sure to accentuate the positive and the mutual value.

Focus first on what’s in it for the influencer.

If possible, find out what their goals are and see how working together can move them towards reaching those goals, whether it’s overall exposure and being associated publicly with your brand or early and unique access to information.

Once a topical list of influencers is identified, they can be engaged in a variety of ways including: •• Share their status updates on social networks •• Comment on their blog posts or industry articles •• Follow on social networks •• Write about them •• Interview them

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

Influencer participation pitches should be credible, succinct and offer a clear description of what is being asked. Pitches should also be very easy to act on. In other words, make it really easy to participate. For example, writing takes time, so offer to do a phone interview instead.

Other tactics that work include: humor, high degree of personalization, incentives and association with other influencers already on board.

5. Promote And Measure Influencer Content Provide influencers with tools such as sharing images, pre-written tweets, embed codes and short URLs. Making it easy to participate and promote can substantially increase the success of your influencer content program.

Offer influencers feedback on what’s working and what is not. Since they’ve invested in the creation of the content, it’s in their interest to see the promotion succeed.

4. Create Influencer Content Influencer content co-creation might best begin with small, easy projects that advance the relationship to more robust and substantial time commitments.

After content is collected from influencers, assemble, edit and package in a promotable format. Then share a preview to inspire their continued participation to promote. Be sure to set expectations by sharing your timeline for production, publishing and promotion.

Any content type you can create in a content marketing program can be co-created with influencers, from eBooks to videos to articles to social micro-content.

Any content type you can create in a content marketing program can be co-created with influencers

Offer influencers feedback on what’s working and what is not By partnering with influencers, marketers can tap into a wealth of knowledge and a breadth of exposure for brand messages. These are not self-promotional messages though - they are the things that the brands’ customers care about.

The mutual investment in creating useful and engaging content can pay dividends for all involved. This is especially true for the resource-strapped marketer looking to scale content quantity, while not sacrificing quality. The icing on the cake are the relationships built that can fuel content collaboration, partnerships and even new business in the future.

Lee Odden Author, CEO | TopRank Online Marketing Lee Odden is a consultant, author, public speaker and CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, a digital marketing agency serving companies like Dell, LinkedIn, MarketingProfs and McKesson with influencer and content marketing services. As an international speaker and author, Lee publishes the only content marketing blog ranked #1 three times by Content Marketing Institute. He has contributed to numerous books and publications and has been cited by The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Forbes for his expertise.

www.TopRankMarketing.com

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How In The World Do We Measure The Value Our Marketing Creates?

Daniel Newman

ROI - return on investment - is the holy grail of marketing. Year after year, we talk about it — in boardrooms, at events, on social media, virtually everywhere. While it’s not hard to figure out why ROI is so important, it is definitely hard to nail it down.

Through all the talk and speculation, there are very few successes when it comes to clearly articulating what is possible in terms of measuring true ROI in our marketing efforts.

We are in a world of endless marketing channels and with more and more being added on a seemingly daily basis. For instance, real-time video is now a hot marketing commodity thanks to Meerkat taking over the recent SXSW in Austin. Now, marketers are rushing to get the most out of this platform.

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However, simply using new technology without a long-term strategy doesn’t cut the mustard. What’s more important is understanding how your efforts on each of these channels are adding to the bottom line of your organization. What is the ROI? While this question continues to confound marketers, the truth is: Marketing is more measurable than ever.

Simply using new technology without a long-term strategy doesn’t cut the mustard From vanity analytics to conversions on landing pages, we have a wide range of tools to analyze everyone who visits our website, responds to our emails, clicks our links, or follows us on Twitter. We can easily track where they go, how long they stay, and whether or not they respond to our overtures.

By collecting all this data, we sketch our buyers’ persona and, using a suitable marketing strategy, in a perfect world we win them over.

But wait... are all marketing activities vested in just one goal – customer acquisition and sales? Not really. I’ll explain why.

Think about going to the supermarket.

Everything you need to buy is nicely stacked on shelves. But is the purchase all that matters to you? Of course, not. How you are treated, how long you wait to checkout, what sales are on, whether the shelves have

been restocked; an aggregation of all these factors determines your final experience and whether or not you’ll continue shopping at that particular store.

The same holds true for your customers.

It’s not the final purchase; it’s the value of the entire experience that matters to them.

Therefore, you can't just weigh marketing success against your sales. You need to step back from number-crunching and think about the real value you’re providing to your customers. This real value is evident when measurement and new sales are blended seamlessly with the new KPIs of marketing ROI.

It’s not the final purchase; it’s the value of the entire experience that matters While these new KPIs do not suggest marketers should stop focusing on creating customers and revenue, they identify and measure those factors that are responsible for meeting long-term business goals: Customer satisfaction, product innovations, and employee productivity and retention.

Customer satisfaction is not an overnight achievement or something you should assume will just happen naturally. Make sure your customer service is focused on getting to the root of your customers’ pain points quickly and thoroughly. Make them feel like they are the only customer in your roster. If

Daniel Newman President | Broadsuite Media Group Daniel Newman is the Co-CEO of V3 Broadsuite and the President of Broadsuite Media Group, a family of digital marketing, media and content marketing companies. Daniel is also a 3x best selling author, futurist and insight partner to the world’s largest brands and media outlets including Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and more. Keynote Speaker, MBA Professor and happily married father of 2 beautiful girls.

www.broadsuite.com 26

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

they feel like they are valued and not just a number, they will bring numerous other potential customers to you through word-ofmouth referrals. Customers who feel valued become loyal, life-long brand advocates.

Customers who feel valued become loyal, life-long brand advocates Product innovation is not just having a whole slew of products; it is creating the best goods and services on the market. Don’t get preoccupied with the newest shiny thing; amount is not innovation. Instead, look for holes and invest time in bettering your current products to be more effective and desirable.

Just like an L-shaped supermarket may be “innovative”, it may not be the best designed or most desirable shopping experience. Many monolithic companies still exist because they

focus on keeping their products current and innovative without adding unnecessary flash or glitter.

If your employees are not empowered, how can you expect them to give the type of customer service needed to boost revenue?

How can you expect your employees to think of ways to innovate and improve your current services if they aren’t empowered? You can’t.

Spend time cultivating relationships with your employees and listen to their needs. If they feel valued, they will produce highly valuable work. Highly valuable work includes creating highly valuable products and customer service.

The bottom line is, your ROI is not just about how much you get back in terms of revenue generated or sales made; it’s more about how you create delightful experiences for the customers and turn them into brand loyalists.

Let’s Connect.

Via the Twitter and LinkedIn stamps above

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Do Your Customers Know Your Brand Promise?

Would They Say You Keep It? Shep Hyken

What is your brand promise?

If you asked your customers that question, would they know the answer? And if they do, would they also be able to say that you deliver on that brand promise?

There are some companies that are so good at what they do, that with just a sentence or a few words the typical customer would be able to recognize them immediately. Can you identify these companies by their brand promises?

The helpful hardware store The online bookstore that now offers so much more The technology company with stores that offer innovative products and genius support Branding has always been important in business, but with the growth of social media and demands on customers’ time, it’s even more important to simplify your brand promise into something that will attract the customer’s attention. And then, you must deliver on that promise the first time and every time to draw customers in and keep them coming back.

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Building Your Business From The Brand Up

Brand Quarterly

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Pizza Hut recently placed an advertisement to interview candidates for the position of social media manager. The catch was that the candidates had to sell themselves in an interview that lasted 140 seconds. That may not seem like a long time, but in the digital age of social media, short, concise and meaningful messages are important.

So Pizza Hut took a page from the Twitter playbook, which allows messages up to 140 characters, and came up with the idea that potential social media managers should be able to sell themselves in less than 140 seconds. Brilliant!

Whether you are a candidate for a job or a company trying to attract customers, there are several words that you need to focus on as you convey your vision (or brand promise): concise, brief, recognizable.

Words to focus on as you convey your vision (or brand promise): concise, brief, recognizable

And so on, until one contestant would challenge the other to “Name that tune!”

How many words would you have to use to describe your business so that your customers - and potential customers - could identify it? It shouldn’t take more than a phrase or a simple sentence. If it’s more, I have some homework for you - Create your brand promise (or vision or mission statement). Make it short, concise, easy to memorize and be reflective of what your company is about.

Once you have put your brand promise into words, the way to make customers remember and recognize your vision is to deliver on the promise. You want to become known for your special brand of business and customer service and for keeping the promise that you make to the customer.

Ultimately, the customer will be able to not only identify your company by a concise statement of your brand promise, but also begin to feel a special bond that forms when promises are made and kept.

Twitter allows no more than 140 characters to communicate a message, forcing us to be direct and to the point. Can you create a vision or mission statement shorter than 140 characters? What about your brand promise or customer service commitment?

This is a bond that goes beyond loyalty especially the loyalty bought by customer loyalty programs that are based on rewards, points or discounts. It is a true connection based on keeping promises and building relationships that gives customers something more - a feeling of ownership.

Your goal is to be so recognizable for what you do that your customer could – as in the examples given above – name your company when it is described by a brief phrase or statement.

When we refer to our customers as owning our brand, we’re actually referring to them as owning our brand promise. Taking that to the next level is when we can get customers to feel ownership in our business.

This concept reminds me of a TV show I used to watch when I was a kid, Name that Tune.

With a subtle hint, the game show host would ask the contestants how many notes they needed to identify a song. The dialogue went something like this:

This is not ownership in the typical sense, where a customer has a stake in the company. This is emotional ownership, a bond that makes them feel part of the business. They feel like more than just a customer, an account or a number. This is my concept of customer partnership, which is loyalty on steroids.

Contestant 1: “I can name that tune in 12 notes.”

Contestant 2: “I can name that tune in 11 notes.”

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Building Your Business From The Brand Up

True customer loyalty doesn’t come from a program True customer loyalty doesn’t come from a program. It comes from an emotional tie between the customer and the business.

Customer loyalty becomes reality when the customer refers to the place he or she does business as: “My grocery store …”

“My pharmacy …”

“My coffee shop …”

You get the idea. And, the “ownership” the customer has to their favorite stores usually comes from how the employees make them feel. The customer is recognized, often by name. There are at least one or two employees that have built some rapport and bonded with the customer. The concept is that people don’t do business with a business.

They are doing business with the people in the business.

This kind of loyalty isn’t built by a brand promise that is only focused on the product.

You must promise - and deliver - a quality

People don’t do business with a business. They are doing business with the people in the business

product at a fair price with a positive customer service experience that includes building a rapport with the customer. This is the winning combination where a business meets its customer’s needs and at the same time creates some type of human connection that endears the customer to their business.

As a business, we try to get our customers to perceive us a certain way. In the end, the customer determines if we have succeeded.

What promises are we making to our customers? Does what we sell meet all of our customers’ requirements? Does the customer service and experience meet and exceed their expectations? Is their perception of their experience in line with what we want it to be? If so, we have congruency between what we want our customers to think of us, which is our brand promise, and what they actually do think of us.

So once you have established and implemented your brand promise, ask questions to make sure you have achieved “Customer Congruency,” defined as: When what we promise and what the customer receives are thought to be the same.

If your customers’ perceptions are in line with your brand promise, you have taken a major step toward meeting and exceeding their expectations and earning their loyalty – and ultimately their ownership of your brand promise.

Shep Hyken Chief Amazement Officer | Shepard Presentations Shep Hyken is a customer experience expert and the Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations. He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author and has been inducted into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame for lifetime achievement in the speaking profession. Shep works with companies and organizations who want to build loyal relationships with their customers and employees. For more articles on customer service and business visit his website.

www.hyken.com

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Is Your Brand A Zombie?

Kristof De Wulf

Are you familiar with the popular television series ‘The Walking Dead’? The sheriff's deputy, Rick Grimes, awakens from a coma in an apocalyptic world dominated by flesh-eating zombies.

Knowing that the majority of people worldwide would not care if 73% of brands disappeared tomorrow (‘Meaningful Brands’ study, Havas Media Group), we should seriously ask ourselves whether brands have not turned into zombies as well. They are still ‘walking’, thinking they are be alive, yet finding themselves in a decaying state with their vital signs at an all-time low.

The risk of brands turning into zombies is very real. Brands have a myriad of challenges to deal with nowadays, none of which is easy to tackle. They have a hard time standing out from the crowd; when the effects of brand usage and prototypically are factored out, brands hardly show any exclusive image attributes. Brands can make increasingly less use of functional claims: organizations such as the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) are narrowing the mind spaces that can be claimed.

Brands are playing a ‘zero sum’ game: most of them compete in flat-lining categories, with private label sales expected to soon exceed branded product sales in Europe and other maturing markets like the US and Canada (Planet Retail). Brands are under increasing time pressure: the expiration date of brand creativity is getting shorter, with ideas being copied better and more rapidly.

Brands can no longer rely on the classic Pareto rule: in any given category, 20% of customers currently represent maximally 50% of revenues. And brands struggle to connect with younger, more empowered consumer generations: what marketers consider to be important for the marketing-savvy millennials is not always thought of as such by the latter.

The expiration date of brand creativity is getting shorter, with ideas being copied better and more rapidly 32

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

Brands Are Too Egocentric Brands could long rely on their old and proven tricks to stay alive and healthy: throw in another brand campaign that maximizes GRPs, come up with new product innovations, extend the brand’s product range or jump on the promotion bandwagon. However, the effectiveness of these tried and tested solutions is in sharp decline. The fundamental problem related to each of them is that they typically take a brandcentric perspective, not a consumer-centric one.

By doing so, brands suffer from many kinds of biases: an illusion of knowledge bias, thinking they know more about the consumer than they actually do; a false consensus bias, starting from their own perspective of the world; an observational selection bias, making brands find new evidence to support their own beliefs; an agnosticism bias, with brands not knowing what they do not know and focusing too much on things they already know.

Fewer Solutions, More Problems Albert Einstein once said: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions”. If brands wish to remain relevant in the future, they would benefit from spending less time coming up with new brand solutions and more time understanding consumer problems and deriving relevant consumer insights from them. There are ample examples of what happens when brands do not take this philosophy at heart.

Kodak filed for bankruptcy early 2012, having largely underestimated the huge market potential of digital photography, despite the fact that one of their engineers invented the digital camera in 1975 long before the digital age.

Kellogg’s learned it the hard way when trying to introduce breakfast cereals into the Indian market. Failing to recognize that the Indian breakfast has vegetables and rice on the menu and that storing fresh milk is not a common thing in India, it took them far more time and money to be successful in the Indian market than originally anticipated.

And LEGO suffered from a 10-year period of declining performance because it lost its connection with its customers.

After CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp took over in 2004, the company decided to put the child at the heart of everything they do. The results are impressive: LEGO tripled its revenues since 2007 and has become the most powerful brand in the world according to the ‘Brand Finance Global 500’.

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From Listening To Collaborating

A Long Way To Go

With nearly 3 billion brand conversations taking place around the world every day, consumers have become a highly powerful global marketing machine themselves, either boosting or working against the effects of traditional brand advertising. But consumers do more than just talk and share. A recent study in the UK highlighted that consumers now spend more time and money on innovation than all consumer product firms combined (M.I.T. Sloan School of Management), with initiatives such as Kickstarter increasingly gaining momentum.

In order to get there, brands still need to take a few hurdles. The first one deals with bridging the collaboration divide. Despite the fact that 4 out of 5 consumers are knocking on big companies’ doors to share ideas with them (‘Consumer Collaboration’ study; InSites Consulting), only a minority of companies invites them in. The second hurdle is acknowledging the difference between enabling consumers to collaborate with brands and motivating them to do so.

The persons formerly known as consumers have turned into contributors and volunteers, composing a world full of problem solvers who are creating billions of dollars’ worth in value without even being paid for it. This holds even more so for younger consumer populations.

Whereas the mental mindset of baby boomers was “These are the rules”, Generation X lives by “I don’t follow the rules”, Generation Y uses “These are my rules” and Generation Z says “Let’s co-create our rules”. Clever organizations lift upon customers’ desire, enthusiasm and ability to collaborate with brands and create the necessary conditions for co-design, cocreation and co-ownership.

The persons formerly known as consumers have turned into contributors and volunteers

Companies are relatively good at the former, but terrible at the latter. Turning consumers into collaborators means offering them autonomy (‘I am free to do or not do this’), lifting on competence (‘I am good at this’), creating relatedness (‘People like me do this’) and rewarding value (‘What I do is important’).

The final hurdle is to demonstrate true business impact of consumer collaboration, with only fragmented evidence accumulated so far.

“Forget branding and positioning. Once you understand customer behavior, everything else falls into place”, T.G. Stemberg highlighted.

Only by getting really close to consumers and by joining forces with them, brands can stay vibrant, living to the heartbeat of consumer insights. Start embracing consumer collaboration and offer your brand the best protection against turning into a zombie.

Kristof De Wulf Co-Founder and CEO | InSites Consulting Kristof is co-founder of InSites Consulting, helping global brands boost local brand relevance by generating, activating and validating fresh consumer insights. Spending more than 20 years with world leading brands, his passion is to make companies ‘consumer-activated’ through consumer collaboration and employees acting upon consumer inspiration. Co-author of the book ‘The Consumer Consulting Board’, Kristof has been published in numerous A-rated journals and frequently speaks at events worldwide. He is a proud member of Switch & Shift’s ‘League of Extraordinary Thinkers’, for which he regularly blogs and is also former Associate Marketing Professor and Member of the Board of Vlerick Business School. @kristofdewulf

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Building Your Business From The Brand Up

People still judge a book by it’s cover.

Does your’s match your brand story?

Brand | Design Implementation

Brand Quarterly

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Distribution Channel Management – Walking The Tightrope Andressa Chapman

A Case Study On How Distribution Channel Management Can Impact Brands And Revenues 36

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

To increase reach and ultimately revenues, companies have long sought to build new relationships with distribution channel partners. In the hotel industry for example, there is a variety of distribution channels with whom hotels can partner to accomplish this goal, and new partners arrive on the scene seemingly every day (including the recent news that Amazon has now officially launched

its own service and Tripadvisor may now want in the game).

Among the most utilized of these partnerships are online travel agencies (hereafter referred to as OTAs). To oversimplify, we’ll identify these as the Expedias and Booking.coms of the world, any website where a user can search hotel options in a destination and return a myriad

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of options for places to stay. As hoteliers will attest, it takes a considerable effort to balance these partnerships - receiving the greatest benefit, yet not becoming overly dependent on the distribution channel.

What can happen when things get out of hand?

Love At First Sight As a partner to hotels, OTAs present several great opportunities for revenue generation: •• They have much larger advertising budgets and can market a hotel to a larger number of people than the hotels can themselves (both major brands and independent hotels and resorts) •• They have the means to hire the best talent – smart folks in the realm of e-marketing, statistics, and technology development to ensure they’re staying ahead of the competition when it comes to marketing a hotelier’s product •• They have fostered relationships with partners like Google for optimal paid and organic search placement The way the partnership between a hotel and an OTA works is this: The hotel signs an agreement with the OTA stating that it will provide a certain number of rooms for the OTA to sell, and in return, the OTA will receive a commission on each room sold. To level the playing field in the marketplace, there are rules set forth to which each party agrees, and certain accommodations are made to the OTA. For example, the hotel and OTA agree to sell the same room for the same price across their respective channels, and the OTA is given permission to use the hotel’s assets such as brand name and images in order to help sell the rooms.

As the marketplace has continued to grow, becoming more crowded with supply, OTAs have demonstrated their potency and played 38

an increasingly important role in hoteliers' revenue generation strategies. Indeed, during the recent economic recession, hotel marketing budgets were reduced to save on operating expenses, and to survive, hotels had to find other means of generating the revenue.

Many accomplished this by increasing their use of other distribution channels like OTAs. And although revenues increased, so too did the costs to achieve those revenues.

What Lies Beneath In the years since, as hotels have used these channels to achieve revenue goals, future year budgets are being written to include year over year increases in revenue. When a hotel has increased revenue goals and a relatively stable marketing budget, there is little choice but to use the same distribution channels again to hit its numbers. But if the hotel is achieving its revenue goals with the help of the OTAs, why is there cause for concern?

But if the hotel is achieving its revenue goals with the help of the OTAs, why is there cause for concern?

As illustrated below, if a property sells a room on its website for $200 a night, it has generated $200 in revenue for that available room (this “revenue per available room” is called RevPar and is a primary benchmark by which hotels measure success). If the hotel sells that same $200 room via an OTA, the hotel receives only a portion of that $200 because of the commission it must pay to the OTA (direct buying costs in the illustration below). But there’s another cost to the hotel that is not as visible on the property’s P&L the shopping cost to acquire that booking.

Remember, the hotel wants the consumer to book with it rather than other hotels in its market, and it works to acquire that

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

reservation utilizing its own marketing budget using tactics such as pay-per-click, targeting and retargeting advertising, etc. But the hotel is competing with its OTA partners for that booking as well.

Because the OTA is allowed to use the property’s brand name and images to generate bookings for their hotel partners, it can - and does - bid on the hotel’s brand terms in PPC and utilizes the hotel’s brand assets in its own online marketing tactics. Therefore, the hotel’s marketing budget is having to work that much harder to drive the revenue to its direct channels, making it much less efficient.

If one takes these added shopping costs into account, the property is getting far less than $200 for that room. Multiply that one room on that one night by 80,000 room nights per year, and the hotel starts to have a problem.

According to Cindy Estis Green, industry expert and CEO of Kalibri Labs, a data modeling and consulting firm specializing in evaluation of hospitality revenue performance asserts, hotels would be better served to measure net RevPar. Net RevPar is P&L RevPar after the cost to acquire the customer has been removed, painting a more accurate picture of the hotel’s actual RevPar achieved, as illustrated below.

Illustrations courtesy of Kalibri Labs

Hoteliers know they need to manage OTAs more effectively. They realize that, despite short-term revenue increases using OTAs, their overall profitability has steadily

decreased over the past several years.

Indeed, according to recent study Estis Green conducted for the Hospitality Asset Managers Association (HAMA), in the post-recession era since 2009, revenues have increased for hoteliers; however, the total cost paid in commissions has increased at a rate twice that of revenues. Despite the clear evidence of a problem, knowing change needs to happen and making it happen are two very different things.

Getting A Grip For all the benefits they provide hotels in short term revenue gains, OTAs come with costs. The proliferation of their use among the hotel industry has caused what could be argued as a commoditization of the hotel product, with properties relegated to a thumbnail image and a price among a long, scrolling list of other hotels in the consumer’s mind. However, in the middle of this sea of commodity lies opportunity for hoteliers to take back their brands, and with it, increased profitability. Some small changes can have an immediate impact; other changes will require expense and patience.

Formal hotel distribution management channel training is needed in the industry, and often, those people making decisions do not have such training. To date, Cornell University is one of the only institutions

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Formal hotel distribution management channel training is needed in the industry of higher education to offer a hospitality revenue management curriculum. Industry organizations like the American Lodging & Hotel Association and the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International offer revenue management training and certification programs. While some hoteliers take advantage of these resources, many revenue management professionals are left to learn from their predecessors, and this sometimes means learning their bad habits.

Onsite marketing managers who have backgrounds in lead generation, campaign development and execution, database management, email marketing, social media, direct mail, and other areas of the marketing discipline may also prove handy in assisting the revenue manager with driving revenue to the hotel’s direct channels. However, many hotels don’t have this resource. If fortunate, the hotel has an agency or two handling public relations, creative and digital, and often the direction the agencies receive is from a general manager or sales team leader.

However, these individuals a) may not have the marketing background necessary for determining how to best utilize these resources and b) already have full time

jobs running the hotel and driving group business, respectively. If hotels are truly fortunate, they do have an onsite marketing manager to assist the revenue manager.

Traditionally though, these two positions have operated in silos, each with his or her own goals and benchmarks for success. In order to be truly impactful, there needs to be a partnership between the two functions with common goals, and clear and cohesive communication.

Finally, the utilization of OTAs as a primary source of revenue has been ingrained in the infrastructure and culture of hotels large and small, both big brands and independent hotels, for decades. To effect lasting change – to decrease reliance on the OTAs – will likely come with a hefty price tag for many hoteliers. Not only is the hotel owner looking at the cost of adding new resources needed to replace the decreased revenue from the OTA, but also there is potential for yearover-year revenue losses caused by the learning curve that is part of investing in new resources. New team members need time to learn how to best work together, develop new strategies, test new ideas, determine the best strategies for allocating budgets, and best utilize new technologies. Efficiencies are gained over time, but hoteliers will need strong stomachs to reap longer term rewards and win back the delicate balance of power in the distribution channel management game.

Andressa Chapman Principal | Trigger Andressa Chapman is Principal of Trigger, a hotel marketing company, where she builds brands and drives revenue for hoteliers coast to coast. With over 15 years experience marketing hotels and resorts, Andressa is a regularly invited speaker at universities and industry conferences on the topics of hotel branding as well as digital and integrated hospitality marketing. She was named among the “Top 25 Most Extraordinary Minds in Sales and Marketing” by the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International, and she was recently an invited author for The Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing.

Follow her on Twitter @TriggerAchapman

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Building Your Business From The Brand Up

INNOVATIVE GLOBAL MARKETING STRATEGIES

LONDON 30 Sept - 1 Oct 2015 “King of Brand Names”, Manfred Gotta to deliver 2015 Keynote

The premier conference for professionals who drive Global Marketing activities:

As our 2015 Brand2Global keynote speaker we welcome Manfred Gotta a leader worldwide in the art and science of naming new products and brands. In his home country Germany, he is known as the “king of names.”

• Global Branding

Working from an idyllic Black Forest valley, Manfred has created such well known names as:

• Global Digital Media

Porsche Cayenne Porsche Panamera

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Mercedes Actros

• Global Customer Experience

Evonik

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smart

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We look forward to Manfred sharing his creative process with us at Brand2Global.

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Learn Winning Strategies For Global Branding & Digital Media Success

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Save up to £300 on our Main Conference rates. Be quick! Available for a limited time only.

More Popular Articles On BrandQuarterly.com 3 Keys To Building Brand Loyalists Norman Guadagno How can brands create loyalists for the long haul? From Apple enthusiasts to football team fanatics, the common thread is emotional engagement. This article outlines three must-have storytelling components that are particularly well-suited for winning the customer lifecycle.

Marketing: The Art And The Science David Newberry There continues to be ongoing debate around the topic of the role of art and science in marketing. A debate that highlights why marketing as a function continues to struggle to assert itself and to deliver real commercial value.

Marketing Lessons From Pinterest Promoted Pins Bob Gilbreath In the summer of 2014 Pinterest unveiled its much-anticipated business model, Promoted Pins, and recruited around twenty beta partners, such as Target, Kraft, General Motors and Expedia. Six months later on January 1st, 2015 Pinterest announced that the program was a success and that it would expand. Something must have worked.

Don’t Just Say Your Brand Is Good – Prove It! Richard G Rosen It’s an exciting time to be a marketer. We have more tools to reach customers than ever before, but so often, it’s easy to confuse tactics with strategy. It’s important to take a step back, assess the way the tides are shifting, and determine how we can best keep up with consumers’ expectations.

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Listen Up! Great Communication Does NOT Begin With The Message Eric Fletcher We are preoccupied with messaging.

From 140 characters to sixty seconds; Pinterest to YouTube. From the candidate to the evening news anchor, we place a premium on what we say and how we say it.

Every Second Is An Opportunity To Connect With Your Audience Lynne Jarman-Johnson Digital Is No Excuse.

Look around you and you’ll see heads bowed. Over smartphones, tablets, watches; they are bowing to new technology and you are looking up, praying to the Technology Gods that they are seeing your messages and clicking your “try me” button.

The 21st Century Brand Meter Jay Deragon For decades brands have presented themselves to the marketplace without consideration of how the organizational parts perform as a whole. This has proven to be disastrous in a digitally connected marketplace, where consumer engagement and experience trumps brand messaging any day of the week.

Are You Managing Your Social Media Or Is It Managing You? Michelle Leavesley Mastering management issues around social media is fast becoming a priority for business leaders in all sectors. We outline for you five ways to effectively manage social media with a capital “M”.

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5 Steps To Empower Others To Think More Creatively Marcia Reynolds, PsyD, MCC

To help people think differently about situations, problems or products, you have to disturb the way their brains automatically process information. In order to define who we are and make sense of the world around us, our brains like to work quickly within the confines of what we know. The brain doesn’t like to have to stop and “think outside the box.”

In fact, you have to get someone to actually see their box before you can get them to see outside of it.

That is why it is hard to change people’s minds or to ask them to think more creatively. Our meaning-making, quick-to-interpret brains actually constrain creativity.

Because of this, you need to disturb the automatic mental processing so people actually stop and think about their thinking, which opens the door to seeing new ways of being and acting.

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Brand Quarterly

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This can be done with a ‘Discomfort Zone’ conversation - challenging the beliefs that created the frames in the brain and surfacing the underlying fears, needs, and desires that are keeping the constructs in place. Through reflective statements and questions, you can help people actively explore, examine and change their beliefs and behavior.

The ‘Discomfort Zone’ is the moment of uncertainty where people are most open to learning. This is the best opportunity for helping people develop new perspectives, see different solutions to their problems, and potentially grow as human beings.

According to the latest research in neuroscience, the brain needs to be aroused by strong emotions such as surprise, defensiveness, and confusion before an insight or new pattern of thinking can emerge. To help others make shifts in their thinking and behaving, you must be willing to challenge beliefs and create tension to shortcircuit the brain’s routine. There needs to be a hole in the “force field” that protects the sense of reality before people will actively explore, deliberate, and change their mind.

Consider your own experiences. The sudden, new and amazing solution to a problem probably didn’t come to you as you hovered over your desk rearranging the details. The new idea that could reshape your future didn’t appear to you as you sat in the dark ruminating over past conversations. Flashes of insight are not self-generated. The sudden solution, amazing truth and profound understanding that gave you no choice but to change your mind most likely came as a result of someone asking you a question or reflecting back to you what they heard you say in a way that made you stop and question yourself.

For the same reason you can’t tickle yourself, you can’t fully explore your own thoughts 46

Your best creative thinking has probably been triggered by someone else. For the same reason you can’t tickle yourself, you can’t fully explore your own thoughts. Your brain will block and desensitize you to selfimposed exploration. But when someone you trust adeptly challenges your reasoning and asks you a powerful question that breaks down your defenses, your brain is forced to re-order data in your long-term memory. For a moment, the break down feels awkward.

Your mind goes blank. You might feel a pinch of anger or sadness because you didn’t see the situation differently before. Then you are likely to laugh at what you see… you laugh at yourself for being short-sighted when the answers were just in front of your nose.

You can create this reaction in others through patience, listening, and using your curiosity to ask the right questions. Here are five steps you can use to open people’s minds:

1. Let Go Of Knowing You have to enter these conversations trusting that the person will see new possibilities if you ask the right questions.

If you know what you want them to say, they will feel you are pushing them instead of being interested in their point of view. You must go into a conversation curious about what they think and how the conversation will unfold. And you must genuinely care about the person’s success. If they sense you are there only because you have a goal to be reached, they will experience your questions as interrogation instead of creative exploration.

2. Listen To Their Story For Clues The purpose for listening goes beyond ensuring that people feel heard. You need to pull out the assumptions and beliefs that are creating the box they can’t see beyond.

When you rephrase their assumptions and

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ask if they are absolutely true, you allow people to question their thinking. They can then sort out truth from speculation on their own, instantly giving them a view of what else might be true.

3. Rephrase And Ask Questions Instead Of Offering Suggestions As they tell their stories, ask about the desires, disappointments, and fears you sense they are feeling. You can be wrong about what you sense. If you are wrong but framed your observation as a question, they will answer your question by explaining their view of what is causing their emotions, which then takes the conversation to a deeper level.

What do you think they are holding onto that is keeping them from moving forward?

What do you sense they want but are angry or fearful about not getting, such as respect, recognition, or safety? When you help them see how their emotions have limited their thinking, their blind spots come to light.

4. Have Them Articulate Their “Aha” Insight Before They Commit To What Is Next Many people will stop, say “Wow, I had not thought about it that way before” and then plunge forward with a solution or new idea.

Ask them to articulate what they now see,

so the insight becomes clear and permanent.

Otherwise, they could forget what they have learned.

5. Be Patient And Comfortable With Discomfort When the conversation begins to feel risky, messy or emotional, breathe and recall the purpose for it - to help them think for themselves. If you slip and declare what is wrong with their thinking, their brains will shut down. No one likes feeling wrong or stupid.

Remember you are watching the brain of the person in front sort through and work things out. Be patient with the process so you don’t get entangled in their reactions.

When the conversation begins to feel risky, messy or emotional, breathe and recall the purpose for it If you are a leader looking to empower others to think more creatively, spend more time asking questions than giving advice. When you ask good questions that make people stop and think about their thinking, you are building on what they know instead of limiting them with what you know. You help people become open to learning and able to see the world around them in new ways.

Marcia Reynolds, PsyD, MCC Author, President | Covisioning LLC Dr. Marcia Reynolds has over 30 years working with global corporations in executive coaching and leadership training. Her greatest success story came when she helped transform the culture of a company to go from inevitable bankruptcy to extremely successful IPO in just 3 years. She is president of Covisioning LLC, the Training Director for the Healthcare Coaching Institute and the author of 3 books including her latest, The Discomfort Zone: How Leaders Turn Difficult Conversations into Breakthroughs. Read more about the Discomfort Zone process and assess your ability to have uncomfortable conversations on her website.

www.outsmartyourbrain.com

Brand Quarterly

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How To Lead Well During Times Of Change Karin Hurt

Change is scary – be it business restructuring or a brand overhaul.

Read on to learn how you can lead your team through, and inspire confidence in, the changes that are occurring.

From my perspective, the new system was genius. Instead of our enterprise customers typing in their service orders in an email for call center reps to retype them into our systems (which almost always contained errors), the customers now had an easy interface that would "flow through" to the backend systems.

The new approach was faster, with higher quality, and an added bonus of working on weekends.

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Only one problem: the reps (and their union) HATED it. And they had a point. What about white glove treatment for high-end customers? What about relationships?

The union steward was adamant that the change was “just proof” that we cared about the bottom line more than the customer experience.

The truth is both points were valid. Large Enterprise customers wanted efficiency AND differentiated service from THEIR kind reps, like Kenetra. It wasn't either / or. It wasn't them or us. We needed to work together on building a customer-focused adoption strategy that the reps could believe in.

As it turned out, our careful strategy was successful, and our call centers led the Nation in "Flow Through," the leading indicator that our change efforts worked.

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Although I give some tongue-in-cheek credit to my rendition of “The Flow Through Happens Tonight” (to the tune of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”). A bit of fun never hurts in the change game.

And yet, I still thank God this silliness preceded YouTube.

6 Ways To Lead Well During Times Of Change If you’re faced with a big change, follow these 6 steps to ensure lasting results:

Be crystal clear on what you’re looking to accomplish. Communicate and reinforce your vision through every medium possible. When you’re sure everyone’s got it, communicate even more. It’s important to explain the reasons behind the change, as well as to identify the specific behaviors you need from employees in each role.

You can download a free ebook with an easyto-implement vision building and behavior identification exercises here (email required).

2. Be Honest About The Benefits The notion that ALL employees care about is WIFM ('what's in it for me') is BS. Sure, employees want to know "what's in it for them", they equally want to know what's in it for you and for THEIR customers.

Leaving that part out just leaves them to fill in the blanks and make assumptions (i.e. the next step is to downsize). They want to know you're thinking this through with your brain, and not just your pocketbook.

Don't start advocating for a change that's half-baked or full of flaws. Test it first with a small group, take their feedback seriously and get it right. It's tough to regain credibility.

"Oh yeah, I admit it sucked before, but now it's better" only leaves the masses wondering why some bozo made a choice to sing praises for an idea, system, or process that was full of problems in the real world.

Even if it looks great on paper, your boss is sold and it worked in the IT war room, field test the change first.

Yes, this takes time. Go slow to go fast.

1. Establish A Clear Vision

The notion that ALL employees care about is WIFM (‘what’s in it for me’) is BS

3. Start Small

In my example above, we worked out the kinks with one team and gave headquarters feedback until I'm sure they were sick of hearing from us (actually, me... never make your team be the bad guy). Take the risk of making some waves to make it easy for your team. We were slower out of the gate than most regions. But no one remembers that part of the story.

4. Establish Easy-Access Listening Posts This is perhaps the most important part.

Really listen to what your people are saying.

Most importantly, respond to feedback with solutions - not selling. When you fix something, communicate it back five times, five different ways.

5. Gather Reluctant Testimony Lift up as many testimonials as you can. Get your most excited employees showing how your new idea, system or process changed their world. Your most influential stories will come from the least likely suspects: the sales guy who never bothered with this crap before; the new rep who's now running circles around the old timers because she uses the system; the supervisor who got her entire team (including the union steward) doing Harlem Globe Trotter tricks with the system.

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6. Involve The Team In Key Decisions

You may be tempted to talk; to encourage. Resist the urge.

Try listening. Then listen more.

No one wants stuff done TO them, or even FOR them. WITH them goes a lot further.

What's working well and how do we leverage it? What enhancements do we need? Where should we head next? All these questions go a long way.

E - Empowering

How To Inspire Confidence In The Change

Give them clear parameters on which to make decisions. Encourage them to try creative approaches. Provide resources. To build confidence, let it go.

The process above is all about inclusion and building confidence. There are some key leadership behaviors that you can incorporate at each phase of the process to inspire confidence that the change is good, and to help employees feel safe and competent.

5 CLEAR Leadership Traits That Inspire Confidence:

A - Asking Great questions make people think. Nothing inspires confidence like discovering your own answers. To build confidence, ask provocative questions.

R - Risk Taking

C - Celebrating Pay attention to small improvements.

Celebrate milestone successes. Focus on the behaviors causing the wins. To build confidence, celebrate small improvements.

L - Listening You may be tempted to talk; to encourage.

Resist the urge. Try listening. Then listen more. To build confidence, listen from your heart.

Don't freak out when things go wrong.

Encourage weird ideas. Prepare them to present to powerful audiences. To build confidence, allow graceful failures.

Change efforts require great leadership, and most leaders under-estimate the importance of a clear strategy and deliberate behaviors at every level of the business. Change requires confidence and inclusion, not selling. Change requires the audacity to inspire, an audacious vision, and the humility to listen carefully and include everyone touched in the process.

Karin Hurt Consultant, Speaker, Writer, CEO | Let’s Grow Leaders Karin Hurt is a keynote speaker, leadership consultant, and MBA professor. A former Verizon Wireless executive, she has over two decades of experience in sales, customer service, and HR which she leverages to help clients turn around results through deeper engagement. She was recently named on Inc’s list of 100 Great Leadership Speakers, AMA’s 50 Leaders to Watch in 2015, and a Top 100 Thought Leader in Trustworthy Business. Her book, Overcoming an Imperfect Boss is available on Amazon.

www.letsgrowleaders.com 50

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Why Personal Branding Sucks ( And Is Bad ) Ed Zitron

It’s time to stop crafting your wonderful, shiny personal brand that’s actually nothing like you.

Ed shares his own experiences and flat out tells you – stop lying, be honest, just be yourself – more people will (probably) like you that way.

As of right now, I have roughly 22,000 Twitter followers. I’m confident that far too many of them are robots, drawn to me by some unearthly musk, but people for some reason want to read my stupid words. You see I, a supposed “thought leader in Public Relations,” a “best-selling author” and apparent success in Public Relations, do not talk like most PR people.

Most PR people have almost the same biography on Twitter - #PR Professional/ Guru/Ninja/Maven, Love Social, Love Media, Love Running, Love Coffee, Love Cocktails, Love Puppies, Love People (in fact they may Love Everything), #Hashtags, and an endless stream of nonsense branding. They see Twitter as a place to create a personal brand, a vacuous statement, defined by Wikipedia as “the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands”, which is another way of saying “lying”.

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You see, if you are actively “personal branding,” if you are creating a brand that is not you online, you are in some ways lying.

Lies are not just the things we say that are not true; they are the things we actively hide.

Now, I’m not saying that everyone should post their naked, vulnerable bodies to every social network. I’m just saying that if you are treating your existence as a brand and a thing (versus you) you are removing your own humanity and lying to the world.

If you are creating a brand that is not you online, you are in some ways lying You’re also an insufferable dope and few people will actually like you. Nobody will #engage with your #brand or #follow you because you #use a lot of #hashtags. Yes, there are exceptions, such as that one guy who posts the list of countries by size and then slots in the size of social networks (which literally makes no sense). For the most part, as a PR or marketing person, you will be part of an empty sea of bumbling oafs, desperate for attention.

Nobody will #engage with your #brand or #follow you because you #use a lot of #hashtags “Some people have confused having a personality with having a "brand," the difference just being intention, I guess,” said Andy Orin, a writer at Lifehacker.

Here’s the horrible truth; if you’re boring as hell, there is no hiding that. Furthermore, if you’re creating a false persona you will eventually fall down (and hopefully die?), or people will see through it almost immediately.

If you think you are the Talented Mister Ripley,

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you are incorrect. You are, by proceeding with the idea of having a “personal brand,” betting that the individual facets of your life you share through the thin veneer of what you think people want. You’re probably incorrect. If you are correct, I still hate you.

Shut Up And Stop Doing It When I started on Twitter I was trying to create a personal brand of someone I ironically already was. I was trying to come off as the approachable PR guy who was a former journalist, sharing articles and saying how great they were and how I loved writing but now I was in PR. I’d desperately compliment reporters in the most asinine and pathetically pandering ways, almost always when I didn’t feel any true emotion toward the piece. This was because I was desperate and vulnerable. I didn’t gain many followers in the first year or so.

When I started on Twitter I was trying to create a personal brand of someone I ironically already was Then something changed. I began to get very unhappy at my job. I was bored and angry, and thus I’d ramble incoherently on Twitter, essentially posting things I found interesting, or posting anything I thought that was funny.

I still followed all the reporters I followed, but instead of desperately begging for their attention I’d joke with them, or talk to them about what they were tweeting as Ed, that guy, versus Ed, #PR #Guru #Expert.

Eventually people from the media started wanting to have drinks with me, because I was this guy who was alright to talk to online, who wasn’t pitching them on Twitter (yes, I used to do that). I retweeted things I found funny, which almost all of the time were not from people who were in tech, the media, or

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the tech media (such as Jon Hendren, @Fart, a comedy writer and DevOps expert). To my great surprise, people began to actually like my Twitter account.

Yes, there were and are exceptions. There are some who did and still do not like that I tweet a lot, that I retweet and tweet stupid things, that I can’t stop posting a video called ‘The Dirty Cowboy’ from the 80’s, that I swear, and so on. For the most part, a lot of people (including some relatively well-known people in my industry, technology and for some reason MC Hammer) follow me and keep following me even though I, as described by one PR person who didn’t know was listening, “tweet like a retard.”

It’s Not Just Twitter, Idiot A lot of my digital and personal communication is similar to the 1990’s Movie Crazy People. The movie, starring Dudley Moore, features an ad executive that goes “insane,” and creates brutally honest advertisements such as “Buy Volvos. They’re Boxy But They’re Good. We know they’re not sexy. This is not a smart time to be sexy anyway, with so many new diseases around.”

The ads are run by accident and are a huge success, and Moore creates an agency out of people from an insane asylum.

Notice that Moore is just honest. He’s not crude, rude or mean. He’s also not hyping the car, nor is he saying it’s the most amazing thing ever. He’s saying it’s good.

Notice that Moore is just honest.

He’s not crude, rude or mean.

In my pitches I send to reporters this is how I describe things. It’s a thing, it does a thing, and it’s good at that thing because thing. The result is that I get… well, media results. A lot of them. People pay me plenty of money for this, because I can do it a lot, because I get clients that I know the media will like. I don’t have to sit there like a crazed preacher, saying how everyone’s lives are going to change.

Similarly in my proposals, I don’t talk about being an expert. I say “this way of describing your product or this trend will be something your product fits into, and I can get you this, potentially, but then again I may not be able to, as nothing is for sure and the media are not robots that I program.” In person I say almost exactly the same thing. In fact, I actually write online in an almost identical manner to how I speak, except I have transitioned from British to American spelling.

As a result of this I’ve had a bestselling book, I work with three Fortune 100 clients, I am able to afford to live in San Francisco and I work 7 to 8 hours a day and never on weekends.

If you don’t believe me and want to tell me I’m horrible, you can find me on Twitter. I will retweet you and someone may not be nice to you as a response.

Sorry if this offended you – kind of…

Ed Zitron Founder | EZPR Ed Zitron is the founder of EZPR, a San Francisco, Oakland, Portland and Boston-based media relations agency. His Twitter is @edzitron. He wrote the #1 bestselling public relations book This Is How You Pitch: How To Kick Ass In Your First Years of PR. He has been profiled by Newsweek, Adweek, Lifehacker, and writes regularly for Inc.com. He was named the #7 Best Tech Public Relations Professional by Business Insider in 2014, and one of the best PR Twitter accounts by Adweek. He has also written for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and a large chunk the gaming press in England. He tricked 22 separate public relations people who incorrectly added him onto a media list into falling for the ‘updog’ joke.

www.ezpr.com

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The Customer Journey In The Social Media Era Jeff Sheehan

It seems like every day, I’m seeing an advertisement for the position of Chief Customer Officer. Although not nearly as ubiquitous as many other occupations, it’s indicative of the importance many companies now place on the customer and ensuring that their experience in dealing with the organization is positive, regardless of where in the buying cycle the customer is located.

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Previously, the individual who normally was in charge of this function usually had the title of Director of Customer Service. They were generally someone who had been primarily involved only in customer service and had risen through the ranks after many years of service. This has all changed dramatically and will continue to do so at even more of an accelerated rate, due to the complexity of today’s customer journey in the social media era.

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No longer can a business prosper if it doesn’t address the issues and concerns of a customer at each stage of the buying cycle. Long gone are the days of a purchase representing the end of the customer journey.

Due to social media, in a number of industries, if the customer is not continually nurtured and any type of cognitive dissonance addressed, it can have incredible financial consequences. The smallest complaint can quickly go viral if posted to social media and become extremely disruptive and potentially cause irreparable damage. There are many examples of this occurring over the past several years.

Customer Journey Mapping

Long gone are the days of a purchase representing the end of the customer journey

2. Customer Definition

To ensure this never takes place and that any point of possible conflict is addressed, each and every organization needs to first take an introspective look at themselves and determine how they are positioned during each stage of the journey, from initial prospect to lifetime customer. Each point is dissimilar requiring different strategies, tactics and tools.

To cover all of these, requires an initial understanding of what they are before one can proceed. Identifying them can be complex and is best approached through the involvement of any department within a company, that either has direct involvement with a customer or whose actions can significantly impact the interaction with a customer.

If done correctly, this will take some time and involve a number of individuals, but it will be well worth it. Each conceivable touch point needs to be noted and dissected. Based on my experience in working with some of the world’s largest companies, I would focus on the following: 1. The 4P’s At the outset, the product offering, pricing, distribution channels and overall marketing strategies should be reviewed to ensure each is aligned with the mission, goals and objectives of the company and the customers.

Who is your best customer? Who is the target audience? What are their expectations regarding service, messaging, and all other aspects of the journey? This should be carefully reviewed and summarized as part of the process.

3. Nurturing Of Current Customers Although most focus on the customer acquisition stage as the starting point in analyzing the journey, I feel it is important that the current customers are the first to be addressed.

With the exception of a startup, for most businesses, the real revenues and profits come from existing customers. They are generally amenable to cross-selling and upselling opportunities, which can be done at a much lower cost than with new customers.

The initial step is through a complete exercise in customer mapping, with an objective of ensuring an understanding of what transpires at each stage and how a lifetime customer can be realized, as this is so crucial to the company’s financial success.

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With the exception of a startup, for most businesses, the real revenues and profits come from existing customers 57

You want to make a determination as to what your current interactions look like and what can be done to improve upon them.

What content would be of interest to your customers? What social media channels are they on? How do they feel most comfortable in your interacting with them?

In the case of national accounts in B2B enterprises this might even involve quarterly meetings with report cards; so that you can gauge the strength of the relationship and what has to be done to better align, to help foster an increase in sales and to fend off any competitors.

In the case of B2C companies, this review would be heavily focused on using internal customer data. Gleaning as much information from the data as possible to identify the best customers and how you’re addressing such issues as the order process itself, complaints and loyalty programs.

4. Customer Acquisition Unlike current customers this requires a different approach, strategy and tool set to maximize the potential of acquiring a customer. Acquiring a new customer generally is not easy due to the competitive environment and might consist of multiple steps before an initial purchase is actually made. This is where social media is playing an ever increasing role as a huge percentage of consumers now base their purchasing decisions on testimonials and reviews on social media.

Acquiring a new customer generally is not easy due to the competitive environment There’s a lot more to this entire process that could be discussed at further length, but I just wanted to provide a few tidbits which you should consider. This all leads to what is really paramount; namely, creating the ultimate customer experience.

Customer Experience Whatever you do, while conducting this exercise think of the likes of Apple Computers, Starbucks and Ritz Carlton. All of these companies do an excellent job in ensuring that anyone who deals with them has an excellent experience, during each and every stage of the buying process. In fact, to take advantage of the power of social media in conveying the positive experience of the customer journey with it, Ritz Carlton has an entire social media campaign coined under the hashtag #RCMemories.

I’d suggest you check it out, as it will give you some great ideas on what a company with a large amount of experience in ensuring memorable customer journeys is doing. In fact, Ritz Carlton has been so successful in this area that it actually has a division that does nothing but advise other companies on the Ritz Carlton way of doing business.

Jeff Sheehan Integrated Marketing & Social Media Consultant, Speaker Jeff is a marketing and sales solutions consultant. His background includes over 30 years of global high technology marketing and sales working with some of the world’s largest companies including Intel, Apple Computer, HP, IBM, AT&T, and Cisco Systems, to name a few. During his corporate career, he and the teams he led were responsible for cumulative sales of over $.5 billion. Jeff is a well known speaker, co-host of the weekly radio show, Tech Marketing, and also the co-author of HIRED! Paths to Employment in the Social Media Era. With over 310,000 followers on Twitter, he has been repeatedly recognized as one of the top people to follow on Twitter in the world for social media, marketing, and sales.

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Berlin

3-5 June 2015 Maritim Hotel

“The Internet of Things” Keynote Speaker

Gerd Leonhard – Futurist, advisor and author

Gerd Leonhard is a widely known and top-rated futurist, an influential author, an acclaimed keynote speaker and a strategic advisor. He is the coauthor of the best-selling book The Future of Music (2005), and the author of The End of Control, Music 2.0, Friction is Fiction and The Future of Content (2011, Kindle only). Gerd is also the host of TheFutureShow and MeetingOfTheMinds.tv, as well as the founder of GreenFuturists — a high-level group of leading futurists with a focus on developing sustainable business models.

Six Tracks for You: • Global Business • Content Strategy • TAUS Track • Advanced Localization Management • Inside Track • Unconference Visit the large exhibit hall with service and technology vendors.

Meet professionals from Fortune 500© and many more. See their presentations.

Learn from them. Discuss.

Register Today!

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