Enhance Your Brand Interactivity

In the frey of your normal management activities, take some time to develop a very important, yet often neglected, aspect of brand management: Brand Interactivity.

Brand Interactivity involves engaging your market directly, creating a unique and personal exchange between them and your company’s personality. This can mean letting them personalize your product, or even letting them choose from several “flavors” of a particular acquisition channel.

Consider M&M’s.com, where customers can actually order a customized bag of M&Ms where messages they create are printed on each piece of candy and delivered to their door. You can even send in a photo and have your face printed on every piece. This is interactivity and brand attachment at its finest.

The idea of interactivity is also taking root with major online brands such as iGoogle and MySpace, where users can create their own dashboard and tweak multiple aspects of their experience. This not only delivers immediate value to these applications, it creates a personal and unique dependence from the user.

Even small business owners can find ways for their brand to interact with potential clients. Employees of Blend Production Group, a high-end web design and production firm, actually carry 4 different colors of their business card. When asked for a card, potential clients are delighted to pick their favorite color; attaching themselves in fond memory to the brand.

Start with your lead generation stage and consider ways to enhance your Brand Interactivity all the way to the post-purchase experience. When your customers are familiar, comfortable and personally attached to your brand, the moat around your market share will increase in both circumference and depth.

7 Strategies to Conquer the Falling Sky

It begins at home with the typical barrage of doom-and-gloom media headlines. Then it’s augmented by descending figures on our bank statements. And finally, it’s sealed at the office by clear anxiety on our co-workers’ faces.  Another day of Wall Street woes will certainly fuel this eerie, Armageddon-type fear that has spread virally among business owners and employees in the workplace.

In a scared and frenzied world, now is the time for business leaders to maintain their perspective on reality. With credit tight, consumer spending down, and operation costs high, there truly is an element of survival that must be acknowledged in these times. Put more practically, this is probably not the best time for a corporate retreat to the Caribbean or an “investment” in a few 52″ plasmas for the office. However, it would be a mistake to jump on the bandwagon of paranoia and confirm the fear that will dominate your business if you let it.

Even in a deep recession, smart managers will remain calm and pro-active; not only to protect the fundamental business drivers, but also to lay a foundation for progress when things swing up again. Like a clever gardener who understands deeply his crop and the soil in which it grows; business owners must prune the fundamental business drivers and sow the seeds for future growth. If you can tighten your advertising aim, cut excesses, exploit cost-effective channels and win the hearts of your customers, you will do more than survive the falling sky, you will conquer it!

Here are some management and marketing strategies that will lead you to victory:

1.) Read Ed Roach’s piece on managing your brand with maximum impact during an economic downturn. Give “honor to whom honor is due.” (Rom 13:7); His advice on staying dedicated to Brand Values is priceless.

2.) Keep Your Liquidity Ratio High. This is basically your “cash-able” assets divided by your current liabilities, or expenses. Any business with a liquidity ratio of 2:1 is considered healthy, but depending on your industry, revenue and cost structure, you may want to keep this even higher. There are several liquidity ratios that measure the ability of your company to satisfy its current liabilities.  But the important thing is that you have enough cash to pay for any potential cost increases of your daily operations. With such a volatile economy, overhead and production costs can increase unexpectedly. Make sure you have the cash to keep things afloat until you reach the end of this economic tunnel. Every business is different, but you should know what a safe liquidity ratio is for your business in these risky times.

3.) Scale Back Advertising on Un-Targeted, Mass Media. You need to stretch every square centimeter of your marketing dollar for maximum return. Although mass media channels such as television and radio provide a wide-scale audience for your message, it comes at a price and often reaches unqualified ears, drastically decreasing your ROAS. Unless you have a long tradition of advertising in these channels, with methods to track referrals from these campaigns, and a reported trend of ascending sales from these campaigns, it may be better to use these dollars on more targeted channels. Of course, you’ll need to look at your own numbers before making any advertising decisions, but un-traceable marketing campaigns are less lucrative in the light of economic turmoil.

4.) Focus Your Marketing Dollars on Highly-Targeted Internet Channels. Search marketing campaigns and emails blasts to high quality lists (double-opt in, with demographic info and subscriber counts) are very cost effective and can generate “rich” leads for your business. If you’re already running PPC campaigns, do a through ROI assessment for each keyword and cut those that have consistently underperformed. If you’re running email campaigns, find ways to segment your lists and send the most relevant message and products to each segment. Internet marketing campaigns are often the highest performing in terms of ROI. (Also, shoot me an email if you have any questions about these advertising channels. I’m a Certified Adwords Professional and a project manager for high-volume email campaigns.)

5.) Think Locally at the National Level. Untapped gold mines can also be hidden in locally-focused advertising channels; considering you know enough about your most valuable customers. If you only sell locally, find out what community publications your customers read and consider advertising in them.  If you sell nationally, look at where most of your sales come from, and then compile a list of 3-5 lucrative communities. Check billboard and publication advertising rates in those communities. These opportunities are not only affordable more often than not, but also provide high Share-Of-Voice (not many competitors), which means your chances of being noticed are greater.

6.) Tap into the Social Networks of Your Target Market. Free marketing has never been so rewarding. Whether you want to learn more about your target market or engage them directly with your product or service, social networks are a great way to gain exposure without increasing the strain on your budget. If you’re in a B2B industry, consider trade shows and industry events as a way of meeting potential customers; direct contact and word-of-mouth can have a compounding effect on lead generation. If you’re in a B2C industry, consider weighing in on the forums and message boards that interest your customers. Start by targeting two community networks in which to contribute. Just making yourself known and contributing real value to your targeted networks can produce significant gains in the number of sales and leads generated.

7.) Encourage Your Team with the Spirit of Opportunity. Don’t let the tall tales of impending destruction infect your managers or front-line employees. When you personally stay optimistic and manage without anxiety, it will take root in your day-to-day operations and give way to real progress. For your managers, it will give them the mental relaxation to stay fresh, creative and ambitious about achieving your company goals and looking for new ways to market. For your front-line employees, it will keep their morale up and help them transfer quality service and comfort to your customers. This can potentially separate you from your competitors, so when good times re-emerge, you’ll be ready.