Karen Leland, author and president of Sterling Marketing Group, recently shared an article about branding lessons we might learn from the Oscars. Her article appeared in the current issue of Entrepreneur.com.
Every business can takeaway a lesson or two for increasing your brand awareness. The wonderful aspect of Social Media marketing is the ability to level the playing field for small businesses, new business start-ups, entrepreneurs, consultants, and home based businesses. If you lack marketing skills, it is necessary to hire or align yourself with those who can help.
1. Your business is never too old and every start-up can discover your unique business proposition to fill a need in today’s changing business environments. Online and offline engagement is the basis for increasing your brand value now and in the future.
2. For longevity, you must always be enhancing or reinventing your brand. That might be changing your logo and colors. It could be adding Social Media as a new dedicated marketing channel and not a part-time, “we might get to it if there is nothing else going on” commitment. Finding new applications and use and most importantly getting others to promote your brand through social media networks . . . the new referral marketing. You need to identify your brand before others define it or ignore it.
3. Do you have a new product and trying to break into a well established market? Do the long time leaders have large product lines and a seemingly unlimited advertising budget? You can compete. You can produce short 1-3 minute videos, short podcast, and blog post syndicated with the click of a mouse to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Google+. You can set up Google Alerts, Tweetdeck or similar listening devices, and RSS feeds from industry leaders, associations, and bloggers involved with your vertical market and follow conversations to learn what your prospective customers are asking for and talking about. You can compete.
4. ‘carpe diem’ — To “seize the day” and/or a certain moment in time. To put aside all differences, all fears, all worries, and just go for it. Do you have a unique business proposition or product to solve a problem and bring positive results for your prospects or valued customers? I like to read the front cover of magazines at the grocery store and look for post titles, catchy phrases, and market targeted images and advertising that could influence or capture the interest of my target market. Create a PDF and upload it to SlideShare, make a video, shoot a 6 second video for Twitter Vine, add 4 images to an Instagram collage and post it to your social media featuring one new idea or product. Sometimes you just have to go for it or as Larry the Cable Guy says, “Get ‘er Done.!”
You can read Karen’s article here::http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225877#
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