Brand investment and protection from distractions (Squirrel!)

The month of October is especially exciting for me. There are a couple of reasons: 1) As a Las Vegan I love fall. It allows me to resurface from my rock, which shades me from our scorching hot summer weather, and 2) this month is an annual reminder of why people with my personality type (ENTJ – a Myers-Briggs type) and career go hand-in-hand.

I was reminded of these reasons over the last three weeks while volunteering my time to help induct a new class into Leadership Henderson, a program near and dear to my heart, and by my 2011 planning efforts for our firm’s clientele as they’re preparing to take one giant leap forward come this January, just as we all hope to do.

More specifically, all of this is a strong reminder of just how powerful repetitive marketing is to any organization. We preach repetition daily here at Imagine Marketing, but it always seems to be one of the most difficult marketing lessons for our clients to understand and take hold of.

The reason? It’s easy to get distracted. (Squirrel!)

While it’s necessary large and small organizations have the ability to be nimble and responsive to customer needs, it’s often difficult for those same organizations to identify what areas of their marketing and sales program must be nimble while maintaining and building a consistent brand. That’s where I come in. (Did I mention my personality type?)

Over the last 10 years, more times than I can possibly count, I’ve heard business people say they attended an event once and nothing came from it (distraction) or seen them change the name of their company after investing in their brand for two years because their 12-year-old daughter didn’t like it (distraction). The funny thing? I typically only hear from these people once because they’re not around long enough to develop their business.

The successful folks are the people who believe in implementing a repetitive marketing program because they understand that marketing is a process, not an event. Despite the distractions that will (and they always do) arise, they remain committed and invested in their brand and do their best to implement a sound marketing plan ahead of time to help them remain repetitive in their efforts while providing them a reason NOT to be distracted from items that pop up.

Rarely do people enjoy planning for their business, but it’s necessary. (I head up planning efforts at our place. Teamers say I’m great at it. I think I was voted “off the island” while I was out at a meeting one day.) Regardless of your like or dislike of developing a marketing plan, it serves as a vital component to your business operations and, just as in others facets of your company, repetition is a key element to success.

Repetition in marketing, which often comes from having a master marketing plan in place, will allow your organization to gain greater brand momentum, helping you to move from “it didn’t work the one time I attended” to having multiple people tell you, “I’ve seen your company everywhere.”

So, I encourage you to evaluate your current marketing program for inconsistencies to see where improvements can be made. If you are attending events, are you ensuring you are connecting with your leads or attending events in a repetitive fashion? If you are distributing e-newsletters, are they uniform in brand appearance and caliber of messaging? If you are seeking media opportunities, are you sending newsworthy information their way and consistently reaching out to your contacts?

The opportunities are there so long as you are willing to make the investment in a consistent (repetitive) brand and follow your overall vision, which is easier to stick to when you have a plan in place.

Amber Stidham serves as Director of Strategic Planning for Imagine Marketing.
Contact Amber at astidham@imnv.com

Transparent when transparency wasn’t cool

Here at Imagine, we like to say we’re a different kind of company. Saturn (the car folks, not the planet) used to say that, too. But they’re not around anymore, so we co-opted their tagline. I hope it’s not bad luck.

Of course, when you say things like that, you need to back it up. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard or people will be quick to point out our shortcomings. Recently, we were given yet another opportunity to walk the walk. Ehsan Kaveh, a loyal and valuable team member for more than eight years, resigned a couple of weeks ago to make his way in the world. He handled it in a very professional manner, giving us two week’s notice to ensure a smooth and orderly transition. Most companies, upon getting that kind of news, fire the employee on the spot. My wife worked for a place where a security guard escorted her ex-coworker to her desk and watched while she cleaned it out, making sure she didn’t steal any paper clips or rubber bands. I’ve never understood this kind of thinking. It’s bad for morale and bad for business.

In the past, when I’ve called companies to ask for a particular individual, I’ve been told that person “is no longer with us.” Makes it sound like he or she is dead. Even worse, they never tell you where that person went (whether it’s heaven or a competitor). So I’m left wondering what happened and how it will affect my dealings with the company. It’s also prime breeding ground for rumors. Not a smart way to handle things.

We don’t want to be those guys. We’re more transparent than that. In fact, we were transparent when transparency wasn’t cool (with apologies to Barbara Mandrell). So here’s what happened. Ehsan decided to move on. No hard feelings on either side. We’ll miss him. We wish him well. And the door’s always open for him to come back and visit – especially if he wants to show up with a couple of pizzas around lunchtime.

Brian Rouff is the managing partner at Imagine Marketing.
Contact Brian at brouff@imnv.com

It’s the experience that counts

Recently I took a trip to Disneyland with my boyfriend, Adam, and his 12-year-old daughter, Niki. At what seemed like every shop we stopped in during our amusement park visit, Niki would ask for two quarters and a penny. You may ask yourself, why the 51 cents? (We all know spare change doesn’t even allow you a day’s worth of locker rental at Disneyland.)

Niki wanted the change so she could smash and imprint the penny (at the cost of 50 cents) with a Disney-themed image using a coin pressing machine. Unfortunately, we never had exact change at the right time while we were at the park, so Niki left without what she had wanted most.

Luckily, we visited Hollywood Boulevard before we left California and again found a coin press. This time I had the right change and was happy to see her get something she had seemed fixated on for most of the trip. You can understand my surprise when, the day after we returned home, I found the imprinted penny abandoned in the back of my car.

Fast forward a week and I’m returning to my office with a coworker after a meeting when I spot the now oval coin. I tell my co-worker the tale.

“It wasn’t about the penny, Megan,” he says. “It was about the experience.”

This is a truth that is nice to have reiterated from time to time. I continue to reflect back on this statement and how it relates to business and marketing strategies. In fact, my day-to-day work life revolves around helping other businesses create memorable experiences for their customers. It’s through experiences that emotional connections are formed, and it has been proven time and again that most decisions are made based on emotion, then supported by logic.

Here’s the lesson to be learned: creating an experience is a results-driven strategy and also the most fulfilling strategy. The trick in creating positive results is that it must be genuine and directed at the right people. By looking at every piece of your business that touches your customer as part of the experience, you are taking the control of what message you are sending out. From customer service to invoicing your client, you have the power to create an experience.

What kind of experience are you creating for your customers right now? I encourage your feedback and sharing of ideas.

Megan Lane is an account executive at Imagine Marketing.
Contact Megan at mlane@imnv.com