20 Hats: Thinking Cap

LinkedIn: A communications model experiment

A remark from a friend and my fascination with how people communicate and relate to one other led me to use LinkedIn yesterday.  Despite registering months ago, I hadn’t actively connected with business associates through the site.

According to LinkedIn, there are already 9 million professionals in the LinkedIn Network. In the last 24 hours, I’ve added close to six thousand of those individuals to my network. Whether this proves beneficial to me or not is yet to be seen.

Here are some observations though:

• Millennials ARE plugged in. (DUH!)
The first ten or so people to officially connect with me were all under the age of 30. We’ve all read that this generation is connected to their keyboards. If you could have seen how fast they responded to my LinkedIn invite, you would believe it!

• Women may be better networkers
In my network, women have more connections then men and therefore larger networks. Does this reflect women's well-documented emphasis on relationships?

• Personal relationships still rule
Nothing is a more powerful marketing tool than a verbal referral. An electronic recommendation on LinkedIn is great, but it will never replace a verbal referral.

Age Defying Branding

At the age of 5, my son can “read.” Okay, maybe not read, but recognize every retail logo on the face of the earth. He can also tell you the names of three of the biggest ice cream chains in the country.

How can a kindergartener that only recently learned how to tie his own shoes, readily identify hundreds of logos and tell you what each company offers? BRANDING.

Not advertising. BRANDING. My son has never seen a Starbucks ad (Starbucks doesn’t advertise), yet he knows that you buy coffee at Starbucks.

What Starbucks has done so well that a 5-year-old can grasp it is to establish a brand and stick to it.

Most organizations feel the need to tinker with their logo, tagline and messaging every 12 to 24 months. This tinkering confuses your customers.

Al Reis writes in his book The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding that a brand is not built overnight. Reis says that success is measured in decades. For example, BMW has been the ultimate driving machine for over 25 years.

Reis also suggests that a brand should own a word in the mind of the consumer like Starbucks owns the word coffee.

What one word do you own?

Marketing Budgets

I’m often asked how much a company should budget for marketing. People expect to me have the answer, but I don’t.

Why? Because no two organizations are alike. What works for one wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) work for another. Just because your competitor spends 10 percent of sales each year on advertising doesn’t mean 1) its effective or 2) that you should.

I prefer zero-based budgeting for the following three reasons:

1. You have to have a marekting plan. You can’t justify how much you’ll need without a plan in place and tactics outlined.
   
   
2. You’ll trim the fat. Planning from zero each year makes you ruthless. You’ll take the time to evaluate and cut programs that didn’t work.
   
   
3. Better ROI. By having a plan and having to justify your activities, each dollar you spend is a “smart” marketing dollar that is an investment toward achieving specific, measurable objectives.

Relationship or Transaction: What do you want from your outside consultants?

At 20 Hats, we've spent a lot of time during the past few months discussing the attributes of our firm's "ideal" client. One of the biggest things we've discovered is that we want to work with clients who view our engagement with them as a relationship and not a transaction or one-night stand.

What's the difference?

When a transaction happens, you have two parties involved. One provides a product or service, and the other pays for it. End of story.

According to David Maister, building a relationship with clients leads to many benefits: less fee resistance, more future work, more referrals to new clients, and more effective and harmonious work relationships with the clients.

My guess is that most clients would also say they want a relationship with their vendors and consultants. However, many of them seem to make their buying decisions based on project cost and short term impacts - the very essence a of one-night stand.

Hmmmm, does that mean that many organizations have been burned in the past and are no longer willing to commit to more than a quickie with their outside consultants? Probably.

If we as consultants (or even as clients) want to be treated with the respect, we better start treating each other with the love and respect you gave your spouse while you were dating (before you got too comfortable). Be on your best behavior. Be honest. Be supportive. And most importantly, be trustworthy. According to Maister, you must do something for the other person to give them the evidence on which they can base their decision to choose to trust you. You must be willing to give in order to get.

Posted by Danielle Ezell, APR

Brochure Burnout

One of the most frequent requests we get from clients is that they need a new brochure. Sure a brochure is an appropriate form of communication for some circumstances, but many people, especially sales people, attribute way too much power to this multi-colored, tri-folded, sheet of paper.

If a member of your team is telling you that they need a brochure in order to do their job, they may not be the right person for the poosition! People, not a sheet of paper, make sales. If they can’t close a deal without marketing collateral, they won’t be able to make a sale with it either.

So when do you need a brochure?

Trade shows and other events when you won’t have time to talk to each prospect individually.

As a leave behind. Provide marketing collateral to a prospect at the end of an appointment AFTER they are already interested in your service or product. The piece gives your contact the opportunity to learn more about you while also giving them something to show their boss when they go to him/her asking for money for your product or service.

As reference material. This is especially important if you’re selling products or services that may have a lot of different options to chose from and the buyer needs to time to ogle over the various options. Remember the last time you bought a car? I bet you took the brochure home first and repeatedly looked at the colors and options that were available.

by Danielle Ezell, APR