Most brands fall short of complete integrity. How about yours?

My company brand could benefit from a little listening, introspection and fine-tuning after 8 years of continued growth in the market.

Our brand made one significant shift from “great copywriting” to “content-focused marketing services” about 3 years after start-up. Now it’s time to realign our core strengths and value delivery with a consistently focused message strategy that includes provable, relevant differentiation. The work is very exciting!

Where does a brand strategy start?

Core strengths, core values and delivery track record should be at the heart of your branding strategy. Putting that realness about your people and products into the right words, images and sounds is what effective branding is all about.

Authentic brands are respected, believed and bought.

Start with the demonstrable. How true and accurate are your brand statements and marketing content when compared with what your clients experience in your deliverables?

You and your team, like any other group, know what you’re good at and not so good at. Stick to the “good at” or better yet, “the insanely good at” when differentiating your brand and building consistency into your ad and web content.

We suggest spending focused time, several hours or more, on writing an honest and clear positioning statement for the benefit of your customers and your entire target audience. There are some really great positioning exercises and writing formulas available. We help many of our clients with this vital exercise and the results speak for themselves in business growth.

4 Part Marketing Communication Strategy

I strongly recommend establishing an authentic brand identity prior to implementing any significant marketing campaign. Starting from there, the most basic way to assure that your marketing communications have a high degree of success is to use a proven 4-step process.

If you’ve done a thorough job on your branding strategy, then implementing this formula is much easier and works much better!

1. Identify your target customers narrowly. These are people with money already in their budget, either now or in the future, for the kind of things you provide.
2. Determine the best channels (media, salespeople, events) to reach them.
3. Plainly state how you give them a better life and show evidence – visual evidence and testimonials.
4. Show how to get it easily – buy now, try it free or learn how it works.

The best performing e-Commerce websites follow this formula consistently because it works! We all know why. It’s the age-old value proposition followed by the call-to-action laid out simply!

Somehow, we tend to complicate our messages by adding extra stuff we want to “be sure to include.” Being marketing savvy does not always include being thorough. Too much content injects potential distractions, pauses and stumbling blocks to purchases.

Keep it simple and provide clear, smooth, short pathways to buy your products. It’s what our customers want! Isn’t that what you want?

The post Your Brand – Is it Real? Does it Matter? appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Guest author Stacie Andrews gets the credit for this brilliant question: “What can you give your audience that is relevant to them and still relevant to what you stand for?” 

That, my friends, is exactly what I focus my business practice on and it requires honest self evaluation from leadership. At an agency I previously worked for, principal Haden Edwards called it “matching promises with priorities.” That is, how your company – as guaranteed in your brand promise – helps meet the priorities (wants) of your target market.

It’s a remarkably simple strategy that too few businesses execute well. Steve Jobs seemed to understand his consumers’ priorities instinctively which is why he went against rigid conventional corporate thinking. He got fired from the company he founded, was pulled back in, allowed to keep innovating, and built arguably the most successful company in the world. 

Jobs knew that his customers wanted dazzling tech products that operated the way humans like to live and work – by intuition. He ardently stuck to proprietary platforms for Apple and his detractors despised those tactics if not the man himself. Jobs persevered in wowing customers and Apple products deliver on the company’s promise to meet the priorities of the computing and device-wielding public. Apple’s products perform as expected and give authenticity to their brand identity.

So how do you go about making your brand’s real value relevant to what your target customers really want from a business like yours? The answer is in your positioning. How do you position your brand for success?

Writing your positioning statement will bring you more long term success than just about any other strategic exercise you can do in business.

A positioning statement is your unique promise to customers that differentiates your business from the competition with honesty, relevance and value. It should be one or two sentences and crystal clear. You should articulate it in numerous ways that are natural in both writing and conversation, keeping it real for people.

How to write your positioning statement:

Dr. David Shore of Harvard University developed a positioning methodology many years ago that my previous employer, Tracey/Edwards, taught me.

1. Clearly and narrowly define your target audience.
2. Define your general business category (manufacturer, retailer, law firm, college, home builder, consultancy, engineering firm, etc.).
3. Determine their priorities with your own research. (Suggestion: spend some hours with clients who use your product/service and really understand how they get value from it – or not.)
4. Determine your statement of need fulfillment – what of value will you deliver?
5. Provide the reason to believe with relevant support.

I’ll use my own positioning statement, based on this model, as an example. It covers all of the above in one concise statement which my company strives to live up to every day.

(1) To Business Owners, Organization Leaders and Marketing Directors:

Chuck Sink Link is the (2) communication firm that (3, 4)) creates ideal messages for your target audience because (5) we reveal the authentic value of your brand and convey it with relevance and clarity.

Notice how all 5 listed elements are contained in one brief statement? All of my marketing messages stem from this positioning statement and they’re working. Every week, people I’ve never met introduce themselves and already know who I am and what I do. I have successfully built a strategic brand and now my leads are inbound and the referrals are warm.

If you still struggle with working the numbers cold calling or trying to blitz your prospects because things are slow, I would suggest you take time now to strategically position your brand for success. Highly profitable inbound business will come your way if you communicate the same message with consistency and deliver what you promise.

Your brand positioning is the nexus where your stated brand value meets the needs and desires of your audience. It’s the fulcrum point where your marketing messages gain the leverage of consistency for broader reach. When you consistently reinforce your company’s positioning, you become well known in the market – “for the reasons you want to be known!”

We’re redesigning our website now to better reflect the company’s evolved brand value. I made this decision in part to practice what I preach and more importantly to fulfill my own brand promise to my own business.

It’s vitally important to work ON your business as you must also work IN it. This carpenter’s online house will soon be rebuilt, true to it’s brand positioning. So please stay tuned in the coming weeks for the unveiling of our new site!

The post Brand positioning – Your success sweet spot appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

On March 20, you can learn to save a ton of money for your business! Learn what free marketing is all about.

• Learn how to build a brand…
• Market a company…
• Increase sales…
• All using free tools and methods!

Come to the hands-on single day course: Social Media & Free Online Marketing at Manchester Community College on March 20th!

Register here with CRN # 20774 and Course # NCTD055.

If you have questions about how to register, reply to this email or call me at 603-345-7223.

The post Spend a day, then don’t spend another dime. appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Think about your last five or ten new customers. Where did they come from and why did they come to you? I’m willing to bet they ordered from you or hired you because you established a relationship. If they came to you by referral, it was because you built a relationship with someone else first.

Selling is a tough profession these days. The world of sales has changed profoundly in the last 10 years. I’ve been through it and seen it from numerous angles and have some understanding of what works and what doesn’t in 2014.

I don’t make sales calls anymore and unlike pre-2010, I don’t get anxious during new business meetings. Rather, I stay in touch with prospects without any pretense of selling them something. They know it and I know it. Now I make sales all the time. My “closing ratio” is the best it’s been in my selling career. There is a natural process to it free of pressure on either side of the transaction.

I was having a discussion with a client about pre-internet and pre-voicemail proliferation. Prior to the mid-late 1990s, most companies had open door policies for salespeople because they were the carriers of new product information and industrial innovations. The advance of Internet search changed all that.

In the present day and age, without having a strong network and a good reputation, most salespeople haven’t much hope for success. People don’t give salespeople their time like they used to.

Up until about 2006-2008, before online social-business transparency started to influence people’s decisions, traditional cold calling and appointment setting still worked fairly well. Since then, the game has changed profoundly. The good news for traditionalists is that relationships still rule the business world. People will always prefer to do business with people they like.

I do a lot of self marketing with email, social media and earned media coverage. All of that builds my company and personal brand. My company is known for the reasons I want it to be known.

As a marketing consultant, there is nothing more gratifying than when I gain a new client through these marketing efforts. However, when I look honestly at the numbers, approximately 70% of my business comes from networking and the relationships I’ve nurtured over the last 4 years.

Without brand recognition and continuous marketing to strategically build that brand, networking alone probably wouldn’t be enough for my business or any business to succeed. I once heard a quip that has always stuck with me. When asked about what single thing really works in marketing, the successful entrepreneur answered: “No single thing works, that’s why we do everything!”

For a salesperson to succeed today, he or she needs 1) a good product/service, 2) consistent strategic branding and marketing efforts behind the product/service/brand, and 3) a consistently robust networking routine. The relationships built from the networking combined with the referrals generated from those relationships are where the majority of sales will come. One of my favorite sales gurus likes to say, “It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you.”

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The post Who will take your call in 2014? appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Executives and business owners will often call in a marketing company for ideas to help rejuvenate sluggish or declining sales. “We just need help attracting some fresh new leads for the sales team and we can handle it once we get them talking with us.” It’s a commonly expressed sentiment. My experience has been that once such a meeting takes place, and the marketing consultant knows how to probe, the discussion can turn into something much more profound.

Marketing isn’t a department or a function. Marketing encompasses products and services, brand(s), prices, distribution, promotion and sales. It’s most of your business activity and therefore requires the highest level of business strategy to succeed.

Small business owners are notorious for mistaking marketing with advertising and promotion and they let office managers or executive assistants “handle the marketing.” Even in large firms, the CMO – Chief Marketing Officer (if they have one) is almost always subordinate to the CFO and COO. They often report directly to the COO instead of the CEO. This makes me worry they might CCO – cease creating opportunities by having a buffer zone between the marketing officer and the Chief Executive & board.

The principles of marketing will always be pretty much the same because they are rooted in human nature and the laws of economics. The tactical marketing landscape, however, is nothing like it was ten years ago. The powerful implication here is that marketing strategy must adapt to new technologies and audience preferences. Product design must be superb. Service delivery must be revolutionary or you cannot sell on service!

New business prospect: “My current supplier does all that and more!”

Sidebar: Please stop basing your differentiation on service. Argue all you want but your service can and will be duplicated in short order. Great service must be a given or you’ll lose customers. Customers expect you to cater to them as a concierge and when you don’t, they will broadcast their experience rather than complain to you and a few of their friends.

A good marketing plan must be fully integrated in the overall business plan. A solid marketing strategy begins with a core foundation which includes:

• Market Research
• Target Audience Definition
• Competitor Analysis
• Branding (more important than many think!)
• Tactical Planing
• Implementation

Sounds like a lot of work and it is! I will readily admit there are successful companies that may not consciously plan out and execute all of the above but they actually accomplish these things by virtue of their innate business savvy. It helps when you have great people, driven every day to be the very best in the market! That overrides a lot of potential deficiencies in systems and processes.

There’s a whole lot more to modernizing and improving your marketing plan than trying to capitalize on social media. Feel free to chime in your thoughts with a comment. I’d also be happy to answer questions. You can even talk directly to the CEO. 🙂

The post Marketing is (Almost) Everything! appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Original subscribers to this newsletter have been receiving some form of it since 2006. It started asBrandworth News, was reestablished as Big Hit Bits and became the Chuck Sink Link in April of 2010.

The ads are never in your face and many of them offer valuable free content

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I’m involved in a LinkedIn group discussion about where to draw the lines between marketing functions like advertising, branding, promotion, etc. A marketer named Jon Sherrington from Toronto offered this wonderful metaphor:

“Within the body that we call Marketing: strategy is the brain, advertising is the voice, media is the lungs, sales is the heart and branding is the soul. You don’t dissect the body to make it more functional. You can analyze and philosophize to the nth degree but it doesn’t change the nature of what it is.” (I detect a little St. Paul in there.)

I really like how Jon compares vital organs to business functions. I had an aha! moment when identifying a brand with a soul. The soul is not of the body. It supersedes the mortal body and lives independently. The brand is not of the signs, slogans, salespeople, advertising, website, events, buildings, trucks, social media presence… It could live on without all that if suddenly those things went away. Could Oldsmobile be resurrected? (Not that it should be unless some wave of consumer nostalgia demanded it.)

I’ve read in a couple of places that the value of the CocaCola brand, stripped of alltangible corporate assets, just the brand – the image and the idea alone of CocaCola is estimated to be worth over $70 billion. That’s essentially pure brand equity. It’s the value of Coke’s brand positioning in our minds.

That’s how powerful great strategic branding is for a business. Coke pours tremendous resources toward continually strengthening its brand though committed advertising campaigns. Not all of their campaigns are winners, nor are all of their business decisions good ones (Remember the New Coke fiasco?). But we can see how Coke’s brand equity can absorb even big mistakes and still maintain huge market value sans any physical assets.

So how is your brand doing? Is the soul of your business in a state of grace?

The post Brand for Eternity appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

person in your network known for his or her skills at solving your problem.

The post Business Development Top Ten appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Has a headline or subject line ever grabbed your attention and then everything else in your world disappeared for several minutes while you voraciously read a good article? Did your current project take a back seat while your mind relentlessly pursued more information in the article? Perhaps you stopped and wrote a note to the author because you just had to offer your timely and relevant feedback!

Best of all, maybe the article struck such a resonant chord that you finally made a decision to take some positive action and invest in yourself or your company.

That, my friends, is what good content is all about. We hear about “inbound marketing” and “content marketing” all the time these days, but what is it? Is it an article that’s trending with what most of the target market is thinking? Maybe. Is it a thought provoking piece about a controversial or potentially game-changing subject? Could be.

These examples tend to be lay ups in the world of content marketing. Simply sharing a good blogger’s materials is fine but it tends to get the recipient thinking more about the blogger than the sharer! Lay ups are okay for staying in the game but it’s the more dramatic half court and 3 point shots that win tournaments.

The Secret of Good Content

When you can hit someone with information that experience tells them is prescient and relevant, your’re doing content marketing right. Real world experience and true stories are what grab attention and move people to take action. It’s often the repeated issues that are right in front of us – the problems we can identify and solve right now that we need to be talking about.

You need not always be concerned with innovation or cutting edge technology or the latest best practices to get your target audience’s attention. What you need is authentic value communicated in way that your customers and prospects will benefit from.

If you’re an architect or interior designer, offer easy space planning or simple energy saving ideas. If you’re an attorney, provide ways people can stay informed of changing laws. If you’re a mortgage officer, write about how to manage an escrow account to avoid surprise recalculations. If you’re a manufacturer, share your supply chain expertise in ways that would save customers money. If you’re a printer, show off a direct mail piece with an unusually high rate of return.

These are just the first ideas off the top of my head. I’m sure you can come up with better content ideas for your clients. Perhaps someone like me can help you better develop your content and consistently distribute it.

Keep thinking about things that your audience would like to know more about. Chances are, if something interests you, it will interest them too.  Listen closely to your customers and provide content that answers the questions they’re asking. Keep a file of ideas. Always write down your ideas or you will forget them!

When you see a great article you want share, instead of just slapping up a link, take some time and write down your own thoughts on the same topic. Make it relate even more specifically to your customers.

Clear away the clutter of information overload by serving up content your audience wants to consume and can actually use. You’ll become known as an authentic value provider. You’ll be trusted and called first when it’s time for doing business.

The post Good Content Clears away Clutter appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

I must give credit to my friend and fellow entrepreneur, the founder of The Giant Game Company, for the title of this short article. We were talking the other day about changes going on in his target markets and how he has successfully responded to their shifting needs. “The market made me do it,” he said. I responded by saying I was thinking of an article about that and now I’ve got a title for it.

The post The Market Made Me Do It! appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.