Category Archives: Marketing

Branding, networking & promoting your business

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7 Personal Brand Building Blocks

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OK, it’s like this—- if you’re not sure whether or not you have a personal brand and you don’t know what to make of it even if you do, you’ve come to the right place. Today, we’ll examine the business strategy known as the personal brand and talk about why you want to develop one for yourself. The short answer is, an effective personal brand is an excellent marketing tool.

Your personal brand helps you to clearly define your company and its purpose, describe the value you bring to clients, articulate what sets you apart from competitors and helps you to build and sustain a community of loyal clients who will be happy to give you repeat business and refer still more clients to you. A personal brand serves to establish you as a known quantity, familiar and trustworthy, a go-to expert in your field. Those with a respected personal brand have a high perceived value and that attracts clients. Are you ready to explore personal brand building blocks?

Authenticity

Your clients and prospects have no desire to interact with a focus-grouped and sanitized version of who and what you think they want to see. Clients and prospects would like to know you, i.e., the part of you that culturally accepted boundaries would incline you to share. It’s akin to being emotionally available.

It takes some courage. Sometimes it means you’ll take a public stand that may not be universally popular. If you can appropriately define your boundaries (something that also requires courage, along with self-awareness), the practice works for introverts and extroverts.

Visuals

 It will be to your advantage to maintain consistency in how you present your personal brand, to make it easy for you to be recognized. Develop a visual repertoire that represents you well and makes you and your company memorable in the best way. Create a look that epitomizes you and your company and include your branded elements of style in all visuals:

  • A logo that is used consistently in all media placements
  • Your profile photo that is used consistently in all media
  • Consistent cover and background images used in all media
  • Specific colors used in all media
  • Consistent style of dress when your photo is included in all media representations

Story

Your story can be quite simply, what motivated you to go into business as told through the experiences that brought you to where you are now. Storytelling is used as a marketing strategy and your personal brand is an integral component. Be sure to emphasize that it is the quality of your product or service, as well as the attention paid to the needs of clients, that guides your company. Your emphasis on the importance of meeting the needs of clients and exceeding their expectations on every metric is another must-do.

Expertise

Establishing yourself as an expert is the key component of being in business, even if you’re selling popcorn. Your expertise is the foundation of your reputation and the trust that clients, referral sources and prospects have for you. Showcase your expertise through content marketing, public speaking, interviews and direct interactions with colleagues, peers and prospective clients. 

Visibility

Half of life is about just showing up, as some very wise person said many years ago. Along with your regularly updated online presence, remember to seek out opportunities to appear in traditional print media outlets and to make personal appearances. If you are a decent writer, learn to repurpose your blog or newsletter posts by offering selected pieces to the editor of a media outlet that covers your business sector.

Whether IRL or virtually, attend three or four professional or business association meetings each year. It’s thrilling if you’re asked to be a headliner or a panelist, but just being in the crowd presents many advantages. You can network and meet people who you want to know. You might even meet a good prospect or referral source. You’ll grow and strengthen your professional network. You’ll enjoy the experiences.

Value

A key component of building a personal brand is first developing an understanding and awareness of what motivates clients to do business with you and then developing the ability to communicate it clearly and succinctly in your sales pitches and marketing materials. Work on all the ways you can express your value, the why of doing business with you. Maybe you’ll be able to distill your value proposition down to a single sentence that you can use when asked you to describe yourself and your venture. 

Relationships

Who you know and who knows you are important as you spread the good word about your personal brand. Through your relationships you will receive introductions to others and will expand your network and influence. The list of supporters, referral sources and clients that you accumulate will result in testimonials that speak directly to your character. People do business with people they know and like; they do even more business with people they know and trust.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Anna Wintour, “Nuclear Wintour, ” powerhouse Editor-in-Chief at Vogue Magazine (America) and Global Chief Content Officer at Conde Nast, arrives at the Chanel ready-to-wear collection fashion show in Paris on March 3, 2014.

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Analytics Data: Your Content Marketing Navigator

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So, how are you doing with content marketing? Are you seeing the hoped- for results? Do you have it clear in your mind the reasons for launching whatever content marketing activity you do—blog? podcast? behind-the-scenes videos of your team in action?—-beyond some half-formed idea about how everybody’s doing it, it’s probably good for business, so get busy? I don’t want to be judge-y but if that is your reality, I encourage you to tighten up your game.

Whatever content marketing you’re into, it will all go down much better when you think about it in big picture mode. Content marketing starts with figuring out the purpose, what you want it to do, the end result you’d like to achieve. We know it’s about creating business, but you’ll help yourself by being more specific and thinking about how content marketing works.

Content marketing is premised on the soft sell approach, expressed by educating prospective clients about the performance, quality, cost-effectiveness and user-friendliness of your products and services. Supporting that primary message, you may also use this style of marketing to communicate the expertise of you and your team and portray your company as dependable and trustworthy. You might also send out the message that you are socially responsible, practice environmental sustainability (“green”) and believe in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

If you are put off or intimidated by the very thought of thinking this stuff through, I’ve given you a cheat sheet, shown below. Oh, and remember to invite website and social media visitors to dip into your marketing content by writing a good Call-to-Action that entices them to take a chance—do the survey, download the case study, join the webinar, opt-in and get the newsletter.

But the moral of this story is that you are advised to follow, weekly or monthly, certain key metrics that document how prospects interact with or respond to your content. That reported data becomes your recipe and roadmap for content marketing that works. The data also shows you what doesn’t work, by reporting lackluster numbers.

Follow the open rates, shares and likes of your blog or newsletter and discover which topics mean the most to your readers. You’ll also realize the topics readers don’t love, when your open rate tanks. Data is the navigator for your content. Follow it and find the road to achieving your content marketing and sales goals. Explore free and paid data analytics services and register your website and social media accounts to get started: https://bloggingwizard.com/social-media-analytics-and-reporting-tools/

Common content marketing goals:

  • LeadGen—bring potential buyers to your website and social media accounts, from new or established markets
  • Increasing Google EAT ranking—Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness
  • Brand loyalty—-enhance company reputation, build trust, signal dependability, to know you is to love you

Track metrics that matter:

  • Lead metrics—how many leads does your content generate through email opt-ins, call-to-action appeals, or blog and newsletter subscribers?
  • User metrics—how many page views does your content draw? How many downloads, visits, shares and likes does your content receive? Which content format and topics get the most positive responses from readers and viewers, as indicated by high open rates?
  • Sales metrics—how many of the leads that you generate from your content become paying customers? What is your sales conversion rate?
  • Time metrics—how long do viewers spend engaging with your content, where do they stay longest and which pages do they visit?

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Crunching the numbers that guided decisions made by the Oakland Athletics baseball team and resulted in big wins. The story was told in Moneyball (2011, directed by Bennett Miller) starring Brad Pitt (l) and Jonah Hill.

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Get Multi-Channel Marketing Right

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Much has been written in recent years to extol the virtues of multi-channel marketing. Business owners and marketing department leaders are urged to create a consistent, unified message/ story for their company and its products and services and blast that message to a broad range of media outlets and platforms, the better to reach as many target customers and prospects as possible.

That’s excellent advice as I see it, but there’s more for marketers to consider. The noise level in the 21st century marketplace is so overwhelming and calls for clearly defined strategy and execution plans if you expect to achieve the ROI you want. A one-size-fits-all mindset isn’t going to work.

Because storytelling and messaging are the heart and soul of marketing, a more precise and effective method of using multi-channel marketing is needed to fully realize your marketing objectives when communicating with various audiences through multiple marketing channels. To get the most out of your marketing campaigns, define the purpose of the message/ story you’re putting out to your niche audiences and understand the reach of every outlet and platform you intend to use.

For example, recognize that the purpose, message and platforms that are most suitable for PR/ brand promotion will differ somewhat from the promotional strategy you’ll follow when the objective is to drive sales, announce that you’ll speak at the Rotary Club next month, or grow your blog audience. Read on to get useful ideas on how you might approach some typical marketing agendas.

The objective is PR/branding

So you’re trying to persuade a media outlet to mention you in an article? Start by reading few issues or posts, so you’ll get a feel for the topics covered and know who writes articles about your subject of interest. Next, call and email the business editor and pitch your proposed story. Articles must have a story theme that could be of interest to readers. Popular themes, I’ve noticed, are wellness initiatives, participation in a community event that’s sponsored by a popular local charity and green/ environmentally supportive business practices.

Your objective to receive earned media exposure is to build your brand through name recognition and enhance your company reputation by publicizing the good work that you do. I’m sure you understand that singing the praises of your products and services would be the wrong message for this agenda and requires a different emphasis for your marketing message/ story.

The objective is selling

When selling is your focus, the marketing message/ story will speak to decision-makers and key stakeholders, including end-users. Addressing the most common and dramatic pain points for the use of your product or service and emphasizing the most desirable outcomes is a must.

Marketing messages expressed by way of content marketing such as case studies, a workshop you’ve presented, an article you’ve written, or a webinar or podcast in which you appeared can build trust and confidence by letting you showcase your know- how.

The marketing message/ story will paint a picture that helps prospective customers envision how the features and benefits of your product or service can efficiently address their purpose for using what you sell. Testimonials and on- line reviews also speak convincingly to decision-makers in this instance.

The objective is repeat business and referrals

Customer retention and referrals can be enhanced and encouraged when customers feel valued and part of something bigger than themselves—-a community. Social media is tailor- made for this aspect of your multi-channel marketing strategy.

If your customers skew younger, Tik Tok and SnapChat are ideal platforms for posting videos that make a memorable point in just 60 seconds—- a one minute movie! Twitter is great for posting updates, the platform you use to remind your audience that tomorrow at 4:00 PM they should tune in to your webinar or podcast. Facebook and Instagram are great places to tell stories with photos and longer videos. That’s where you give brand fans a behind-the-scenes look at you and your team and let people get to know you a bit.

Your customer retention and referral marketing message/ story will be subtly different from the PR and selling scenarios. Brand enhancement will incorporate your values and social responsibility but will also subtly reinforce the results achieved with your (first-rate and reliable) product or service, after- sale support and customer service, The story presented will be a feel-good, but you’ll want to embed a purpose and a gentle call-to-action. Come back to see us again and tell your friends!

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: An auctioneer in action at Sotheby’s in New York City.

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Get Noticed: Tactics to Spotlight Your Brand

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If you’ve been trying to increase the visibility (and in the process, credibility) of your brand and Freelance consulting business, you’ve probably realized that standing out against competitors is difficult to achieve. The noise level in the marketplace is deafening and big fish grab nearly all the PR. But all is not lost. There are a few smart moves that will help us little fish to make a splash. Below are a half-dozen mostly low-cost and often successful marketing tactics that you can consider and maybe enact over the next four quarters.

Get On a “Best of” list

PR pros love the fast pay-off and long-tail benefits that getting added to a “best of” list brings. Every business that’s won a “best-of” award over the last 5 years (or more) shouts it to the rooftops. The citation is placed above the fold on website and social media landing pages.

Investigate local or regional “best of” lists, especially those featured in popular or prestigious publications. Some choose candidates by an open nomination process. Touting your inclusion on a “best of” list is cat nip when promoting any other of your marketing tactics—-speaking at a business or professional associations, teaching a class, appearing as a panel speaker or moderator, becoming a guest blogger or a guest spot in a webinar or podcast.

A “best of” list is a great opportunity to be discovered by people who’ve probably never heard of you and your business. Receiving a “best of” award allows you to reach and attain instant credibility among a whole new group of potential customers. “Best of” list readers customarily browse list categories when they’re looking to do business, from finding the best ice cream parlor to the best five best business blogs in your area.

Now listen to this— if you are a contributor to a particular publication, with your publisher’s or editor’s approval, you can launch your own annual “best of” list! While you’re at it, you can also create an advertising campaign around it and make your editor or publisher twice as happy. Creating a “best of” list has the potential to facilitate building and sustaining relationships with ambitious movers and shakers and greatly expand your influence and credibility.

Enter a business award competition

This tactic has a not insignificant cost of time and money, but it’s often a reasonable avenue to pursue because there are more ways to win than you might think. Sponsoring organizations are typically generous with the number of awards and categories they choose to honor. More awards and more categories are an incentive for business owners and leaders to become contestants because there will be more opportunities to win.

Be advised that as with any marketing campaign, there are expenses involved. You’ll be required to join the sponsoring organization. You must pay the award entry fee for every award category that your company pursues—-best new product launch, business of the year, best workplace, social responsibility award and so on. You must buy one or more tickets to the ceremony (even when it’s virtual). The awards process could represent the entirety of your outfit’s annual marketing budget.

After compiling a draft list of possibilities, check the award entry criteria. It’s likely that candidates must join the organization in order to compete for an award and that will be your first expense. Annual dues may run from a few hundred dollars to $1000 or more, depending on the sponsor. Confirm also when new members will be eligible to compete for an award. Next, investigate other entry facts—-the entry application deadline, the fees and whether candidates must be nominated to compete for the award.

Be a podcast guest

There are dozens of podcasts popping up like wildflowers after a summer rain and every host is on the lookout for smart, savvy and entertaining guests. That can be you!

So how can you make that happen? Keyword search podcasters that cover topics you can address. Listen to a few episodes to get a feel for the host’s interview style, listening audience and guests. Instead of sending an email to make your pitch to the host, devise a personal and impactful appeal by creating a video or audio clip to present your proposal. Tell the host:

  • Topics you’d like to cover
  • Why you think podcast listeners will find the information relevant and the insights and benefits that will be derived
  • Elevator Pitch-style info about you to communicate your credibility—-expertise, experience, noteworthy clients and popularity—- you’ve written a book, your blog has 5000 followers, you’re a contributing writer for a respected publication, you’ve won a business award

Identify podcasts that maintain an online archive of episodes, to increase the long term accessibility of your appearance. As well, you should post the link of your podcast guest appearance on your website landing page and on the landing pages of your social media accounts. Because you’ll have the program link, you’ll add to some impressive, trust-building audio content that you can edit or serve up in its entirety.

Podcasts, whether you are the host or the guest, deliver numerous benefits to your brand and business. On the most basic level, it’s a networking and relationship opportunity for you and your host. As you negotiate your way through scheduling and topic selection, to say nothing of the interview itself, you and your host get to know one another and learn about one another’s capabilities. Potentially, a mutual referral source can ensue.

During the interview, podcast guests speak in depth about the product or service you provide, without becoming sales- y. You also describe the customers you usually sell to or work with and explain what motivates prospects to come to you and present a broad-brush overview of how you provide the solutions your customers need.

Communicate the story well and you’ll establish yourself as an industry expert, a thought leader who’s a cut above competitors. You’ll position yourself as a highly capable and dependable professional. You’ll build both brand awareness and brand trust.

Two final preparation steps for your podcast (or webinar) guest appearance will ensure communications. First, be certain that helpful technical equipment is in hand— you’ll need a decent microphone and headphones so that host, you and audience members can clearly hear one another.

Second, you’ll be expected to promote your guest spot and help your host to do so as well. Four weeks ahead of your appearance, post the podcast notice on your website and social media accounts. Help the host to promote and also introduce you to the listening audience and send a media kit three to six weeks in advance of the show.

Contribute articles

Since 2014, I’ve been a staff writer at Lioness Magazine , an online publication whose primarily female target readers (75%) are entrepreneurs, self- employed professionals and corporate or not-for-profit sector executives. How did I do it?

Starting in about 2012, once a week I posted a business how- to article on a large self- publishing website Ezine Articles. As luck would have it, the co- founder and Managing Editor of Lioness Magazine was using the site as a place to buy good content for the new magazine. There are perhaps 100,000 articles posted in the business category and by some miracle, my articles were discovered. After purchasing several of my articles from Ezine, the Managing Editor contacted me and asked to buy articles directly.

Building a solid online reputation is essential for your business (unless you are very well connected and don’t need it. I know such people). First, when prospective clients search you online, you want them to find good content. You present yourself to prospective clients as an expert and your articles are one persuasive way to back up that claim.

Second, the Google EAT algorithm (expertise, authority, trustworthiness) still impacts our SEO ranking in 2022. When you publish presumably useful, accurate articles on a regular basis, it’s a favorable act in the eyes of powerful opinion maKer Google.

Do you read business publications— local, regional , or national? If not, I recommend that you do. There is sometimes an appeal to recruit aspiring contributors. If you’re a reasonably competent writer, give it a try.

Speak (or moderate) on a panel

Appearing on a panel as either a speaker or moderator is a golden opportunity, a wonderful way to demonstrate your expertise and ability to think on your feet. Appearing on a panel is also a gateway to receiving featured and keynote speaking engagements. Seeking out programs where panel discussions are regularly featured is an excellent marketing strategy.

There is an art to panel discussions, whether you are the moderator or a speaker and if you want to be invited to participate a second time, make sure that you perform well the first time.

Make sure that you know the subject. You’re invited to join the panel to share your deep knowledge and experience and/or your intriguing and compelling perspectives regarding the subject matter. You are there to inform and enlighten the audience.

Donate to a charity auction

Many charitable organizations auction off products and services donated by local businesses to raise money at their annual fundraiser, which in most cases will draw a minimum of 100 supporters. If I might, I’ll apply the surprisingly accurate Pareto’s Principle here, commonly known as the 80/20 Rule, and predict that for every 100 guests at the charity’s fundraiser, 20 will be your prospects.

Much will depend upon your product or service line and B2C goods and services have the advantage. Research the online auction items available at any 501(C)3 fundraiser and get an idea of what bidders find interesting and what Development Directors tend to accept. You may be able to create a special service that you only offer through your charity auction marketing campaigns.

Contact the Development Office after you’ve checked the organization website to learn the approximate date of the next fundraiser and ensure that its mission aligns with your brand and values. If your in-kind donation receives a couple of auction bids, the organization may contact you to donate again next year.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Slim Aarons/ Hulton Archive (1955) Paintings on sale at the Portobello Road Market, London

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What the Elevator Pitch Must Do in 2022  

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Yet another pandemic-era reboot that everyone who earns a living would be wise to make is how you introduce your professional self to prospective clients, a potential new employer, or your colleagues and peers. In-person meetings and events are reappearing and your clients are returning to the office, maybe reluctantly and just a couple of days a week. There are advantages to getting back into the swing of things, but your face2face interaction skills may have become a little rusty from lack of use.

I recently attended a virtual meeting of about 15 people and since we didn’t really know each other, we were asked to introduce ourselves and say a little something about our professional background and current role—- in other words, everyone gave an Elevator Pitch. Most of us were a little flabby because that muscle hadn’t been flexed in many months.

But hitting the restart button and expecting your 2-fer Elevator Pitch/ self-introduction to slide off your tongue the way it did in January 2020 is magical thinking. Navigating life and business in the New Normal requires a skill set update.

Remember that the purpose of an Elevator Pitch is to facilitate the growth of your network and your business. In a good Elevator Pitch, you persuasively communicate your value proposition and help prospects understand what you can do for them. A well- worded pitch will express the purpose and usefulness of your business and make clear what sets it apart from alternatives offered by competitors.

Craft your Elevator Pitch to:

1). Capture the attention of prospects and entice them to devote valuable time to listening to you tell them why your product or service might interest them.

2). Help prospects see a possible role for your product or service in their organization.

The prospect

In-depth and continuously updated knowledge of your target customer groups is a given, so you’ll know who you’re selling to. What do you offer that they might need and value? How can your product or service help them to either achieve objectives or solve/ avoid problems? What might your prospects find worrisome in 2022 and how have they managed that challenge so far?

Taking a few moments to think about these questions will help steer your pitch in the right direction and lead to what you’d like prospects to remember about you and your business. The goal is to make your pitch powerful yet succinct, clearly articulating why prospective customers should choose you.

Your value

What are the unique attributes and selling points of your product or service? Understanding the value you deliver will bring to the forefront talking points that prospects want to hear. Keep your customers, competencies and your competitors in mind as you develop your value proposition. Your task is to recognize and articulate what differentiates your company and how you are uniquely positioned to more effectively, quickly, or inexpensively solve problems and help customers achieve objectives, as compared to the competition.

BTW, your main competitor is inertia. Doing nothing is a popular “solution” because it’s easy and people think they’re saving money. Can your pitch motivate listeners to become customers? Assess the response your pitch receives from different customer groups and make adjustments where necessary.

How you say it

Experts recommend that you limit your Elevator Pitch to about 30 seconds and 75 words. Ideally, your little story will be clear, concise and compelling. Fine tune the wording to ensure that you express your company’s (and your own) unique value proposition in uncomplicated language that resonates. The ideal pitch will also be adaptable and easily made longer or shorter to fit different contexts.

Do it well and you’ll make a memorable first impression on a potential client (or new employer). A good Elevator Pitch in your back pocket makes it easier to start conversations off on the right foot, with the ultimate goal of discovering or creating opportunities. The process needed to create your pitch will take not only time, but also face2face experiences before you get it the way you need it.

In 2022 and beyond, all sales and marketing messages must be digestible in mere seconds if you intend to hold a listener’s attention. Clearly and concisely roll out a maximum of three or four selling points known to intrigue prospective customers and become persuasive and memorable takeaways.

  • What you do

Identify the need for your product. Encourage your listener to become interested in your products and services. Show that there is demand for what you provide.

  • For whom you do it

Describe your product-market fit with a powerful sound-bite that sums up in a sentence or two the customers you usually work with and why they do business with you.

  • The value delivered

The listener is more likely to trust your solution when it’s presented as an easy-to-picture remedy that gets the job done. After you establish the need, briefly explain how or why your solution works, based on real-life examples.

When and where to pitch

To more consistently recognize circumstances when it would be appropriate to present your elevator pitch, train yourself to be hyper-aware of your surroundings and the people you meet. Opportunities to deliver your Elevator Pitch don’t always occur where and when we might expect. Do not overlook casual settings as places to meet and interact with potential customers or employers. A wedding you attend, a running group or book club you join, a summer holiday barbecue, or chatting in line at the grocery store can lead to a door-opening, satisfying or lucrative discovery.

Follow-up

Conclude your Elevator Pitch with a call-to-action when the listener shows an active interest in the use and outcomes of your products or services. Ask for a card and offer yours, so that everyone’s website and social media sites can be viewed. Better still, offer to send the link to a newsletter, podcast, blog post or other source that addresses the topic or questions that were raised. You’re looking to establish legitimacy and expertise, build a relationship that leads to trust and rake in some billable hours.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Associated Press President John F. Kennedy visited Tirana, Albania while on a state visit to Europe June 23 – July 2, 1963.

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The Rise of Soft Skills

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In locations such as Davos, Switzerland and Sun Valley, Idaho, billionaire business leaders gather to attend conferences where they participate in important conversations. Many discussions, so I’ve read, focus on leveraging ground-breaking technological advancements such as Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and 5G data networks, plus minimizing carbon footprints and, always, maximizing profits. However, the unexpected arrival of the coronavirus and our responses to it not only preempted those momentous conversations, but also pushed to the forefront trends that not long ago were only distant drumbeats.

You may recall that telecommuting, now rebranded as Work From Home, began slowly about 20 years ago and existed mostly in the high tech space. The much more recent phenomenon known as the Great Resignation has seen 38 million+ workers quit their jobs since 2021 and skimmed 4.4 million employees from the U.S. workforce in February 2022 (most switched employers). Meanwhile, yet another trend has been slowly building in professional development and leadership circles since about the 1980s, the importance of traits and competencies known as soft skills.

The WFH and Great Resignation disruptions have left managers struggling to simultaneously retain talent and lure employees back to the office. According to a survey by Glassdoor, what can be summed up as a toxic work culture (mostly insufficient pay, limited chance of advancement and lousy bosses) is fueling both occurrences. Workers are mounting a spirited pushback and the bosses can’t help but notice. They know it’s time for a workplace culture reboot. Bring on the soft skills.

Like wisps of fog slipping in at daybreak, talk of the traits and competencies known as soft skills slipped onto the radar screens of business thought leaders with little fanfare. Soft skills can perhaps be best defined as empathy, or Emotional Intelligence (E.Q.), the ability to understand and acknowledge the feelings of another.

In your personal and professional spheres, it is now of paramount importance that you commit to understanding the perspectives of others and figure out how to acknowledge and accommodate their values, priorities and experiences. Soft skills traits and competencies—-work ethic, communication, problem-solving, adaptability, delegating, resilience, analytical and motivational ability, collaborating and decision-making—-will put you on the path to achieving that goal.

In our New Normal business environment empathy, that is, E.Q., can bring a competitive advantage to your organization. When you think about it, the ability to see the world from the viewpoint of others has always been among the most valuable resources in your your business toolbox. Let’s consider how empathy will cause you to act with compassion and strengthen your relationships with clients and colleagues and become a foundational element of business growth.

Build trust, inspire loyalty

Soft skills will play a central role in your ability to attract and retain clients and receive referrals and recommendations. The purpose and benefits of your products and services, their environmental and social impact and your diversity, equity and inclusion advocacy are factors to consider within your Freelance consulting practice. How you integrate these messages into your various communications formats, including website text, social media posts, blog and/ or newsletter, marketing emails, images, packaging, shipping and strategic partnership choices and demonstrate your relatability, reliability, authenticity and expertise will add (or subtract) clients from your roster.

Use your communication soft skills, in particular asking questions and active listening, to discover what your top clients feel is important to them now and assess how their perspectives and priorities may have changed since 1Q 2020. Soulaima Gourani, co-founder and CEO of Happioh, a Silicon Valley software company and author of Take Control of Your Career (2016), suggests that a good way to cultivate self-awareness, a component of empathy and other soft skills, is to invite feedback from your clients. Gourani says, “Feedback is not easy to a lot of people and it is an essential component of change. You have blind spots and it is like ‘you’ve got broccoli in your teeth …’ You need people to tell you that, because you can’t see it.”

It’s probably safe to assume that in these turbulent, war-torn, inflationary times, reliability, expertise, transparency and efficiency are at top-of-mind for clients and prospects. Support your clients with follow-up, creativity, training and encouragement—- humanist behaviors that sustain healthy relationships.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Fred Rogers (1928 – 2003), creator of the children’s television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, poses with the Neighborhood Train. The series aired on PBS 1963-2001.

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Rinse and Repeat: Your Content is Evergreen

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What’s the purpose of your marketing campaign? Is it about branding, to make your company name, primary product, or service, memorable in the minds of clients and prospects? Or are you going head-to-head with a competitor and looking to gain or retain market share? Maybe your goal is to expand into a niche market, where you’ve discovered that your product or service is gaining traction and could have potential for more sales?

For every marketing tool that you use—display ad, social media, press release, newsletter, podcast, white paper, webinar—-you create content that costs time, bandwidth and money to produce. Why limit its use to just one platform? Your content is a versatile asset that can be recycled through multiple formats. It is evergreen.

Like a big holiday feast, when many dishes are served and preparation time is longer than the usual weeknight supper, don’t waste the leftovers. Instead, make note of what’s popular and serve it up again in another setting. You’ll not only deliver powerful content to new groups of fans and followers, growing your audience, you’ll save time as you do. Let’s talk possibilities.

White paper slice and dice

Can we start by defining the document? A white paper is written to promote a certain product, service, technology, or methodology and persuade current and prospective clients to believe that it’s useful and beneficial. White papers are stealth sales/ marketing documents written to entice potential clients to learn more about and eventually buy the product, service, technology, or whatever. They are designed to be used as a marketing tool in advance of a sale, to inspire curiosity, trust and demand.

White papers are typically 2000+ words in length and that makes them ideal candidates for content recycling. Selected paragraphs of your white paper can be edited and reused as (one or more) blog posts or newsletters. Your white paper can also become the core of an e-book that you can use in a call-to-action appeal on your website and social media outlets, helping to move prospects through your sales/ marketing funnel and grow your email list as you do.

If contacting media outlets is part of your campaign, a paragraph or two of your white paper might be used as the key message in your press release. If you can schedule yourself into a webinar or podcast, your white paper can provide your talking points.

Blog or newsletter recycle

If you’ve received lots of likes or comments on a post that you’ve written, you might extract a few sentences to create interesting social media posts that you can drop into one or more platforms. Your evergreen blog or newsletter content might result in two or more good social media posts that bring new and relevant info to your fans and followers. Or, you can repost an entire blog or newsletter in one or more of your social media accounts.

You might also be able to recycle a blog topic on a blogging platform, e.g., Medium. You’ll find a few of my posts in Lioness Magazine https://lionessmagazine.com/, a digital publication whose target audience is women entrepreneurs. I’m paid (very modestly) for published articles.

Consider diving into your blog and newsletter archive and updating a topic. Last December, I did exactly that when I realized that a 2019 post on writing a press release is evergreen. I updated with current info and expanded the topic to discuss creating an up-to-date press kit. I sent the article to Lioness Magazine and thank goodness my editor was pleased and agreed to publish it.

You can also turn your newsletter or blog post into a video. You wouldn’t just read it, but rather go on camera and discuss how what you’ve written is useful and actionable and will help viewers make money or operate their business more efficiently. Upload the video to your website, YouTube, Twitter, or other social media accounts.

Finally, you can reconfigure your blog or newsletter, or white paper, into a Power Point presentation and upload it to LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or your website.

Webinar and podcast encore

If the program host will agree to send you the link and you have editing skills, this feast will yield high-end leftovers. For the price of an email address (that grows your list), visitors to your website, YouTube account and other social media can be greeted with an enticing call-to-action, an invitation-only rebroadcast of the entire podcast or webinar. You might also edit a tempting 3 or 4 minute audio or video clip to upload and make your CTA even more appealing.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Patty Duke (1946 – 2016) starred as both Patty and her identical cousin Cathy in The Patty Duke Show (ABC-TV September 1963 – April 1966).

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Is It Time for a Price Increase?

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We’re here to talk about pricing today, a favorite subject of mine, but I admit the process is tricky. Pricing is more important than you might think because if you don’t get it right you either won’t sell much, because prospects and customers feel you’re too expensive, or you’ll sell but won’t make as much money as you could, because you’ve priced too low. Pricing B2B services can be a challenge. You can’t walk into a couple of stores or check on line and comparison shop your competitors, so competition-based pricing doesn’t work. Value-based pricing is the best option for B2B services.

So that you can at least maintain, if not increase, profitability in these unstable times, business leaders and owners would be wise to evaluate the pricing of their products and services and make adjustments when necessary. Revenue and profit are tied to more than sales volume. The most important driver of sales revenue, after ensuring that production or acquisition costs are covered by the price, is the value that clients assign to your products and services. I suppose that’s another compelling reason why B2B services are most successfully priced according to the value and ROI they bring to your customers.

Conducting basic market research will help you discover or confirm the purpose, must-haves, priorities and ROI that drive the confidence in and sales of your products and services. As usual, knowing the customer means everything. Whether you get them on the phone or take them out to lunch, speak to three or four of your best clients to determine which outcomes and benefits, tangible and intangible, matter most. You want to obtain insight into how your products or services bring ROI to clients. Once you understand what your offerings enable clients to do, align your price with the value they bring. Furthermore, include in your marketing messages those benefits that clients with whom you’ve spoken indicated are the most highly prized.

When announcing price increases, it may be useful to explain your increased costs and how long it’s been since your prices have been adjusted. Don’t shy away from highlighting how much your clients have raised their prices. For clients who may be struggling, consider “grandfathering” to continue the pricing for the product or service they buy most often. You could also soften the blow of price increases by designing product and service options to accommodate price-sensitive clients. No-frills, economy versions of your offerings may be welcomed by some. Consider also indirect price increases, such as adding surcharges for expedited shipping, longer payment terms, rush orders and for performing small projects.

Charging one price for your products and services is, in fact, limiting for both you and your clients. The buying decision may be simpler, but it leaves no room for clients to upgrade and you to bring in additional revenue from upselling.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: The banker from the board game Monopoly ™, which was patented by Parker Brothers in 1935.

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Eyes On the Competition

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As was noted in three or four recent posts, business data and other forms of business information, which may consist of the observations and predictions of researchers, journalists and other experts, have always been an essential resource for business owners and leaders. As we move through the 21st century, data-driven decision-making, enabled by powerful software programs and artificial intelligence, has become the hallmark of responsible business management.

Chief among the market research that every successful business owner or leader must do is assess the competitive landscape in his/her marketplace. Questions you’ll want to find answers to include:

  • Who sells products and services similar to your own?
  • Who are their customers?
  • What is the estimated size of their market?
  • Who dominates, how and why?
  • How do the marketplace leaders attract and retain customers?
  • What is their price range?
  • How successful are they?
  • Can you launch your venture alongside these competitors and achieve sustainable success?

Mapping your competitive landscape also includes identifying direct competitors, meaning companies whose services and products closely resemble your own and indirect competitors, that is, those whose products and services present an alternative choice within a similar price range that can be sold as a potentially satisfactory solution. Understanding the difference between direct and indirect competitors can be simplified by comparing the process to shopping for a Valentine’s Day gift.

The chocolate shops are all direct competitors, with price as a potential differentiator, because chocolates are more or less interchangeable. The same can be said for florists. But chocolate shops and florists are as well one another’s indirect competitors within a similar price range because for $50.00, you can buy either a nice bouquet or a nice box of chocolates.

Start your investigation with a key word search using terms commonly chosen to describe your company’s products and/ or services to see who appears and how they rank. Whoever makes it into the top 10 are the most successful of your competitors. You can also check out member lists at the business and professional groups you’ve joined (yet another reason why business associations are a good investment). Visit the websites of the top 4 or 5 competitors in your search, along with their social media pages and Yelp reviews.

Make note of speaking engagements made by the principals—-host organization and topic, along with company participation in local charity events and business awards and nominations received. If successful competitors have done any of those things, don’t be ashamed to follow with a me, too.

Popular products and services

Knowing what sort of products and services are best-sellers for your top competitors is tremendously useful intel and will enable you to make smarter decisions about building your solutions and making your prospect’s hot buttons blink.

So try to figure out what competitors sell the most, what sells the least for them and what’s somewhere in the middle. Keep the best sellers in mind as you design your services, perhaps adding a differentiating something extra to create more value in a way that’s affordable for you, or that you can sell at a premium.

Finally, watch for what gets revised and what gets dropped. Notice how products and services are described and positioned and, if possible, priced. Learn from competitors’ mistakes.

Leadgen strategies

Absolutely, spend time analyzing the website landing pages and social media accounts of your major competitors. You want to know how they keep their pipelines filled and how they persuade prospects to remain on the buyer’s journey. What informational goodies and special offers have they sprinkled into their TOFU, MOFU and BOFU ( top, middle and bottom of the funnel)?

You may find the inevitable free-for-the-price-of-your-email-address e-book or highlights of a keynote speech delivered at a popular conference. You’re looking for inspired, desirable content choices that you hadn’t thought of, so you can offer something similar as a way to engage prospects and stimulate lead creation.

Blog and newsletter content

Pay attention to topics that are most often covered and those that are infrequently discussed. Notice also if certain topics are spotlighted during particular months. Observe which types of posts are often shared on social media and note which platforms are most often used (and which ones used the least). Your objective is to help yourself plan a content marketing strategy that features topics of interest to prospective readers and simultaneously support the premise that you are a reliable source of good information and a capable professional.

If you’re feeling more curious, use a traffic analysis tool to search for the blog-related URLs in the Top Pages list. Analyze their unique page views and visits, conversions, traffic sources ⁠— make note of all the data that’s presented. Publishing a respected blog or newsletter could become an integral building block of your success. .

Selling points

What objectives emerge as the core purpose, the main problem-solving motivation, that your competitors speak to when communicating to prospects—on their website and social media platforms, in case studies, and testimonials and in their newsletters and blog posts? What do they aim to help their customers achieve when making the case to do business with them? What descriptive language is used? Also, what benefits do they emphasize to persuade prospects to reach out to them?

Moreover, what competencies do your competitors trumpet as a valuable resource that their clients prize and prospects desire? Is it a specialized academic degree, skills certifications, prior work experience and/ or prestigious client list?

Call-to-Action

What you want to know is how competitors sell their CTA. “Buy now” and “click here” are phrases you can think up on your own. The purpose of this research is to see examples of (presumably effective) CTA pitches, both the give-away info and what is said to create an appetite for it. The information offered should be something that prospects are likely to find useful, or somehow interesting and for some items they’ll be willing to surrender their email address to obtain it.

A free 30-minute phone conversation with you or a team member that will allow serious prospects to get insight and answers about how your products and services might help them achieve a goal or solve a problem should make a tempting offer. Click the link to learn more about effective CTAs (gotcha!):

https://freelancetheconsultantsdiary.wordpress.com/2021/04/06/a-call-to-action/

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Krystle (L, Linda Evans) and Alexis (Joan Collins) were eternal rivals and fierce competitors on the prime time soap opera Dynasty (ABC-TV 1981-1989)

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2022 Prediction: How You’ll Succeed in Business

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If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that the ground beneath us began to tremble at least two years before the coronavirus appeared and since its arrival, the instability has intensified. Unquestionably, the economic landscape has changed. As the global economy hungers for signs of a robust post-pandemic recovery in 2022, business owners and leaders have no choice but to adapt to the new reality in order to survive and thrive.

You are not in Kansas anymore. The assumptions and practices that were considered prudent even three years ago will fall flat today. Forward thinking business owners and leaders are taking a fresh look at every major aspect of their organization—sales, marketing, customers, operations, finance, HR / staffing and technology-—to reassess how each job function contributes to sustainable profitability, the brand and the values, vision and mission of the company.

Define the purpose of your products and services

We’re accustomed to communicating benefits—-use this or do that so your boss and colleagues will think you’re a genius and your company’s customers will be happy that their needs are being met. But defining purpose is subtly different.

To figure out purpose, you’ll need to understand the pain point, goal, or challenge that compels prospects to search your website and look for information they hope can move them forward. If you want to provide the information they’re looking for—-and you’d better!—-you must know what prospects have in mind, basically know what they need to resolve, when they reach out to your organization.

Define your customer segments

Regardless of the product or service based solutions that your company provides, there will nevertheless be differences among those who buy from you based on factors such as motivation, budget, maybe age or gender, maybe also geography or education level. The more you can discern those differences, the more successful you’ll be in bringing business to your door, both new customers and those you’ve retained.

Expectations and the journey

Marketing research experts agree that customers have high expectations these days; they’re quite used to getting what they want, the way they want it and when they want it. Maybe the expectations started with next-day deliveries? Whatever, it’s a thing now and you have to keep up. Your only option is to make each customer touch point with your company seamless, that is, easy, fast, meaningful and pleasant. You’ll only achieve that nirvana by:

1.) accurately communicating the purpose(s) of your products and services

2.) knowing the motivations and other defining characteristics of the various customer segments

The customer journey that your company presents requires intentional creation. So much is at stake, and first impressions matter. The information and call-to-action you devise to showcase its presence influences the prospect’s decision to further engage (or not), depending on its perceived relevance to the problem or goal the prospect wants to address.

Info that supports the purpose and efficacy of your products and/or services will be contained in a white paper, case studies, archived newsletters or blog posts, customer testimonials and your website’s “About us” page. Does the information that you make available effectively support the purpose of your products and services? If it doesn’t, rewrite or replace.

The Yellow Brick Road known as your customer journey must be seeded with a series of positive and relevant encounters with information that demonstrates your expertise and builds trust. Trot out the info equivalent of the Mayor of Munchkin Land, the Wizard of Oz and Glinda, the Good Witch to persuade prospects to do business with you.

Digital support

The very thought of incorporating digital tools can be intimidating but you can start small, so long as you start. Don’t imagine you must immediately dive into the digital deep end. You’ve been clicking on chat bots for 5 years, so why not put that AI-powered tool to work on your website?

Do that and visitors to your site will be favorably impressed with the sophistication of your company, which is a confidence-booster, and if you know your customers well enough to program in answers to the 6-7 questions they’ll most likely have, you will contribute positively to the customer journey. Other AI/ digital tools can take the form of marketing analytics that you sign up to access. As noted in a December 2021 post, Micrsoft Excel or Power BI, Python, Jupyter and Apache Spark are among the most highly rated data analytics tools.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Dorothy and Toto, the Lion, the Tin Man and the Scare Crow take the Yellow Brick Road into the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1939)