Rebranding is a process that has a beginning, a middle and an end, with the end being the launch of the rebrand internally, then externally.
Step one is to take an inventory of your current brand. What exactly is your brand? How is your brand or reputation perceived in the marketplace? One way to answer those questions is to critically review your key messages - what you are saying in your marketing or communications messages to your audiences. Analyze your messages. Are they clearly focused on the benefits of using your products or services (i.e. we provide printing solutions that reduce paper costs and improve office efficiency), or are they all over the board (i.e. we sell the printer you need). This step usually involves some form of audience and employee research to clarify the current brand position and help identify a new brand direction.
Step two is to set brand goals - what you want to accomplish with the rebrand. Planning is essential to ensuring the new position you stake out for your brand is realistic and achievable. Develop new key messages.
Step three is establishing benchmarks of where your business is currently so you can track improvements after the rebrand. Some items that you can benchmark are unique Web site visits, unsolicited inbound leads, media coverage and customer service requests. Choose some that fit your situation.
Step four often includes a design refresh that includes logo and tagline, as well as marketing materials and Web site.
Step five includes rolling out the rebrand internally to employees while explaining details of the process and how they can live the new brand.
Step six is introducing the refreshed brand to customers, prospects, suppliers and other external audiences. It helps to promote the rebrand.
Jim Thebeau
CEO, Henry Russell Bruce
jthebeau@hrb-ideas.com
800-728-2656
Friday, November 27, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The Secret Power of Public Relations
Companies that are not using public relations are missing an essential communications channel to reach prospects and customers – and to build their brand.
PR opens a new door, a new channel: media coverage, usually at a cost lower than equivalent traditional advertising. And, it’s often seen as more credible than advertising.
Many PR practitioners believe that unpaid media (generally defined as editorial coverage generated in any medium) offers three to five times the credibility of paid media (advertising). This multiplier effect is based on the long-held belief that consumers regard news coverage as more credible than advertising.
The success of public relations is based on how it is implemented, given that it is a very relationship based communications tool. A large part of the value is in creating a good media relationship.
Simply sending out one news release will likely have a very small, if any, impact on sales or brand. Instead, create PR tools such as case studies, white papers, customer testimonial statements, educational articles and regular news releases for your Web site or distribution.
However, a well developed, ongoing public relations program can have a significant impact, because it increases your company’s visibility to the media and in the media. Recurring media mentions also boost your brand and top of mind awareness, especially if you are providing content of value.
How can your company implement an effective public relations program? To keep it simple, you can:
• Develop lists of media contacts (and their contact information) for key trade publications, business journals, blogs, Web sites or local media
• Reach out to media contacts to let them know who you are and what kinds of editorial content/industry expertise you can provide
• Create and distribute one news release per month on a newsworthy topic and include a link back to your Web site (releases are great for generating inbound links to your Web site, which improves your Google site rankings)
• Develop offers such as white papers, case studies or industry trend pieces that you can offer for free download on your Web site
• Distribute important news to your media lists as well as through national distribution services such as PR Web for as little as $200
• Integrate all your media efforts with social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others
The real secret for PR success is an ongoing program that creates editorial content of value and keeps your name in front of the media and starts establishing your company as a provider of industry expertise.
P.S. If you are interested, a recent Pew Research Center poll finds that television remains the dominant news source for the public, with 71 percent saying that they get most of their national and international news from television. Forty-two percent say that they get most of their news on these subjects from the Internet, compared with 33 percent who cite newspapers. Last December (2008), for the first time in a Pew Research Center survey, more people said they obtained most of their national and international news from the Internet than those who said that newspapers were their main source.
Jim Thebeau
CEO, Henry Russell Bruce
jthebeau@hrb-ideas.com
800-728-2656
PR opens a new door, a new channel: media coverage, usually at a cost lower than equivalent traditional advertising. And, it’s often seen as more credible than advertising.
Many PR practitioners believe that unpaid media (generally defined as editorial coverage generated in any medium) offers three to five times the credibility of paid media (advertising). This multiplier effect is based on the long-held belief that consumers regard news coverage as more credible than advertising.
The success of public relations is based on how it is implemented, given that it is a very relationship based communications tool. A large part of the value is in creating a good media relationship.
Simply sending out one news release will likely have a very small, if any, impact on sales or brand. Instead, create PR tools such as case studies, white papers, customer testimonial statements, educational articles and regular news releases for your Web site or distribution.
However, a well developed, ongoing public relations program can have a significant impact, because it increases your company’s visibility to the media and in the media. Recurring media mentions also boost your brand and top of mind awareness, especially if you are providing content of value.
How can your company implement an effective public relations program? To keep it simple, you can:
• Develop lists of media contacts (and their contact information) for key trade publications, business journals, blogs, Web sites or local media
• Reach out to media contacts to let them know who you are and what kinds of editorial content/industry expertise you can provide
• Create and distribute one news release per month on a newsworthy topic and include a link back to your Web site (releases are great for generating inbound links to your Web site, which improves your Google site rankings)
• Develop offers such as white papers, case studies or industry trend pieces that you can offer for free download on your Web site
• Distribute important news to your media lists as well as through national distribution services such as PR Web for as little as $200
• Integrate all your media efforts with social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others
The real secret for PR success is an ongoing program that creates editorial content of value and keeps your name in front of the media and starts establishing your company as a provider of industry expertise.
P.S. If you are interested, a recent Pew Research Center poll finds that television remains the dominant news source for the public, with 71 percent saying that they get most of their national and international news from television. Forty-two percent say that they get most of their news on these subjects from the Internet, compared with 33 percent who cite newspapers. Last December (2008), for the first time in a Pew Research Center survey, more people said they obtained most of their national and international news from the Internet than those who said that newspapers were their main source.
Jim Thebeau
CEO, Henry Russell Bruce
jthebeau@hrb-ideas.com
800-728-2656
Friday, November 13, 2009
Mastering the Rockefeller Habits
I recently found a most interesting business book mostly by accident. It's called Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and it's based on the leadership and management philosophies of John D. Rockefeller the legendary businessman of the early twentieth century.
Though many might wonder what we could learn in this digital age from such an old timer, the book by Verne Harnish is a basic how-to guide to applying the Rockefeller habits in today's fast paced business world.
Thus far, we have applied one of these principles to our business at Henry Russell Bruce with the positive effect of moving discussion and decisions along toward more rapid decision making. A great first step that comes directly from the book. It is a return to basic fundamentals that we often overlook in our rapidly evolving global marketplace. It is simple, practical advice on running your business.
Rockefeller believed in three basic habits and lived by them (quoting Harnish now):
1. Priorities - Does the organization have objective Top 5 priorities for the year and the quarter and a clear Top 1 priority along with the appropriate theme?
2. Data - Does the organization have sufficient data on a daily and weekly basis to provide insight into how the organization is running and what the market is demanding? Does everyone in the organization have at least one key daily or weekly metric driving his or her performance.
3. Rhythm - Does the organization have an effective rhythm of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual meetings to maintain alignment and drive accountability.
As a first step, senior management team at HRB meets daily, while the 2 partners have implemented weekly hour-long meetings to discuss the urgent issues and decisions of the day. This, I believe, has helped us collaborate more effectively and moved us more efficiently toward a new business model we are adopting - growing our Web and digital footprint, while maintaining our traditional agency products and services.
Harnish touches on a host of crucial topics, including delegation, systems and structures, the importance of data, business priorities, market dynamics and barriers to growth, among others.
One of the most interesting sections is labeled Mastering A One-Page Strategic Plan, Keeping it simple keeps it clear. And, the book offers a template for the one-page plan.
The book is full of real world case studies of companies Harnish found that follow these Rockefeller Habits and go on to grow and prosper.
Have you gotten back to fundamentals or read Mastering the Rockefeller Habits? We welcome your comments.
Jim Thebeau
CEO, Henry Russell Bruce
jthebeau@hrb-ideas.com
Though many might wonder what we could learn in this digital age from such an old timer, the book by Verne Harnish is a basic how-to guide to applying the Rockefeller habits in today's fast paced business world.
Thus far, we have applied one of these principles to our business at Henry Russell Bruce with the positive effect of moving discussion and decisions along toward more rapid decision making. A great first step that comes directly from the book. It is a return to basic fundamentals that we often overlook in our rapidly evolving global marketplace. It is simple, practical advice on running your business.
Rockefeller believed in three basic habits and lived by them (quoting Harnish now):
1. Priorities - Does the organization have objective Top 5 priorities for the year and the quarter and a clear Top 1 priority along with the appropriate theme?
2. Data - Does the organization have sufficient data on a daily and weekly basis to provide insight into how the organization is running and what the market is demanding? Does everyone in the organization have at least one key daily or weekly metric driving his or her performance.
3. Rhythm - Does the organization have an effective rhythm of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual meetings to maintain alignment and drive accountability.
As a first step, senior management team at HRB meets daily, while the 2 partners have implemented weekly hour-long meetings to discuss the urgent issues and decisions of the day. This, I believe, has helped us collaborate more effectively and moved us more efficiently toward a new business model we are adopting - growing our Web and digital footprint, while maintaining our traditional agency products and services.
Harnish touches on a host of crucial topics, including delegation, systems and structures, the importance of data, business priorities, market dynamics and barriers to growth, among others.
One of the most interesting sections is labeled Mastering A One-Page Strategic Plan, Keeping it simple keeps it clear. And, the book offers a template for the one-page plan.
The book is full of real world case studies of companies Harnish found that follow these Rockefeller Habits and go on to grow and prosper.
Have you gotten back to fundamentals or read Mastering the Rockefeller Habits? We welcome your comments.
Jim Thebeau
CEO, Henry Russell Bruce
jthebeau@hrb-ideas.com
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Branding Through Your Web Site
I met with a client recently to discuss development of a new Web site. The client knew he needed help with both his site and his marketing. When told his site had a multitude of issues, including a lack of searchable content that search engines could not index, he expressed surprise.
On a regular basis, we encounter clients and prospects who do not understand how quickly the Web and search engines are changing. Because we deal with the Web and its myriad components every day, we can help produce a positive impact for those clients relatively quickly. Our goal is more and more to brand companies through their Web sites, since that is their business card to the world that is available 24/7.
Are you branding your organization through your Web site? How else are you branding your company?
Jim Thebeau
jthebeau@hrb-ideas.com
www.hrb-ideas.com
800-728-2656
On a regular basis, we encounter clients and prospects who do not understand how quickly the Web and search engines are changing. Because we deal with the Web and its myriad components every day, we can help produce a positive impact for those clients relatively quickly. Our goal is more and more to brand companies through their Web sites, since that is their business card to the world that is available 24/7.
Are you branding your organization through your Web site? How else are you branding your company?
Jim Thebeau
jthebeau@hrb-ideas.com
www.hrb-ideas.com
800-728-2656
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
How to Work With an Agency
As information channels and screens proliferate and attention spans shrink to nanoseconds, marketers find they have to work harder to get and keep the eyes, ears and minds of their customers focused on the message.
Today, it may be all about one-to-one and relationship marketing, but if your messaging is unclear or too long, you risk losing the interest of your customers and prospects. This is the point in marketing where agencies can provide a helping hand.
Why, exactly, would you want to work with an agency? Here are a few reasons it might make sense for your company.
1. Serious agencies or marketing firms position themselves as independent, third party communications experts that are in business to solve marketing problems. Independent means they are not tied to any specific advertising or promotion media. Third party means they look at your particular marketing challenge objectively and help you solve it by finding the best message and the best way to deliver it to the target audience.
2. Agencies tend to think in ways that marketers don't. Marketers may struggle to come up with new themes, ideas and concepts to promote their products and services. While the agency staff may have produced many ideas over the years, your project is new to them and they will bring a fresh approach to the marketing problem. Outside insights can be valuable and helpful and shorten your time to roll out the concept or idea.
3. After working with dozens of clients in dozens of industries, agency professionals may actually have a very good handle (following some downloads and insights from you) on how your customers think. These creative teams have not lived with the company day and night. In a sense, they don't know too much and can bring you tantalizing concepts that cut through the clutter and deliver your precise and powerful message with impact.
4. Use an agency on a consulting basis to review your ideas, concepts and plans. You don't have to form a permanent, contractual relationship to get some great new outside thinking. Ask senior members of the agency staff for a few hours of time to discuss or review your approaches to a new marketing theme, the launch of a new product or just putting a fresh face on your marketing messages. You may come away with some valuable new ideas that will more than pay for the agency's time.
5. As the pace of business life accelerates and marketing staffs become leaner, outsourcing certain marketing tasks may actually help you get more work done. Outsourcing opportunities are especially relevant for repetitive tasks such as producing email marketing materials, Web site optimization, newsletters, direct mail and collateral. Though the agency professionals may never know as much as you do about your company and its products, they can take on recurring tasks and make sure they are done on time and on budget - letting you focus on your larger, primary marketing objectives.
Don't be afraid to contact an agency and talk with principals or senior staffers about your marketing challenges. Most agencies or marketing firms do not charge for one or two meetings with your team to get a download on the issues or challenges you face. And, most provide detailed estimates or proposals that marketers must sign before any work begins. Legitimate agencies are always willing to discuss timelines, deliverables and billings at any time. If you don't see details you want in the estimates or proposals, ask the agency to add them before you sign off. Don't work with an agency without signed estimates and timelines so you can avoid performance issues later.
Jim Thebeau
CEO, Henry Russell Bruce
jthebeau@hrb-ideas.com
www.hrb-ideas.com
800-728-2656
Today, it may be all about one-to-one and relationship marketing, but if your messaging is unclear or too long, you risk losing the interest of your customers and prospects. This is the point in marketing where agencies can provide a helping hand.
Why, exactly, would you want to work with an agency? Here are a few reasons it might make sense for your company.
1. Serious agencies or marketing firms position themselves as independent, third party communications experts that are in business to solve marketing problems. Independent means they are not tied to any specific advertising or promotion media. Third party means they look at your particular marketing challenge objectively and help you solve it by finding the best message and the best way to deliver it to the target audience.
2. Agencies tend to think in ways that marketers don't. Marketers may struggle to come up with new themes, ideas and concepts to promote their products and services. While the agency staff may have produced many ideas over the years, your project is new to them and they will bring a fresh approach to the marketing problem. Outside insights can be valuable and helpful and shorten your time to roll out the concept or idea.
3. After working with dozens of clients in dozens of industries, agency professionals may actually have a very good handle (following some downloads and insights from you) on how your customers think. These creative teams have not lived with the company day and night. In a sense, they don't know too much and can bring you tantalizing concepts that cut through the clutter and deliver your precise and powerful message with impact.
4. Use an agency on a consulting basis to review your ideas, concepts and plans. You don't have to form a permanent, contractual relationship to get some great new outside thinking. Ask senior members of the agency staff for a few hours of time to discuss or review your approaches to a new marketing theme, the launch of a new product or just putting a fresh face on your marketing messages. You may come away with some valuable new ideas that will more than pay for the agency's time.
5. As the pace of business life accelerates and marketing staffs become leaner, outsourcing certain marketing tasks may actually help you get more work done. Outsourcing opportunities are especially relevant for repetitive tasks such as producing email marketing materials, Web site optimization, newsletters, direct mail and collateral. Though the agency professionals may never know as much as you do about your company and its products, they can take on recurring tasks and make sure they are done on time and on budget - letting you focus on your larger, primary marketing objectives.
Don't be afraid to contact an agency and talk with principals or senior staffers about your marketing challenges. Most agencies or marketing firms do not charge for one or two meetings with your team to get a download on the issues or challenges you face. And, most provide detailed estimates or proposals that marketers must sign before any work begins. Legitimate agencies are always willing to discuss timelines, deliverables and billings at any time. If you don't see details you want in the estimates or proposals, ask the agency to add them before you sign off. Don't work with an agency without signed estimates and timelines so you can avoid performance issues later.
Jim Thebeau
CEO, Henry Russell Bruce
jthebeau@hrb-ideas.com
www.hrb-ideas.com
800-728-2656
Pay Per Click (PPC) Internet Marketing
Today, we have another guest post from Internet marketing expert Jeff McEachron.
Pay per click (PPC) is a type of Internet marketing used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs. In this model, advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website.
Advertisers bid on keywords that their target market will use as search terms when they are looking for their product or service. When a user types a keyword matching the advertiser's keyword, or views a page with relevant content, the ad may be shown. These ads are called "Sponsored links" or "sponsored ads" and appear next to or above the organic results on search engine results pages, or where a Webmaster chooses on a content page.
Benefits of Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising:
* You don't pay to display your PPC Advertisement, but rather you only pay when your ad is clicked on.
* Pay per click ads are only shown to people who indicate an interest in a specific topic exactly at the time they indicate an interest by searching for specific keywords.
* Pay per click advertising helps branding by building awareness and educating prospects.
* Pay per click advertising can be tailored to your specific goals (eg Sales Conversions, Site Registrations, Catalog Requests, etc.).
* Pay per click advertising enables you to present relavant real-time distribution of your advertising on a massive scale, local scale, or anywhere in between. You pick the geographical area where your ads will appear.
* With pay per click advertising, you can set a daily budget to control your costs.
* With pay per click advertising, you can monitor virtually any metric to track the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns
Pay per click ads may also appear on content network websites. In this case, ad networks such as Google AdSense and the Yahoo! Publisher Network provide ads that are relevant to the content of the page where they appear.
Jeff McEachron
jmceachron@hrb-ideas.com
Vice President Internet Operations
Henry Russell Bruce
800-728-2656
Pay per click (PPC) is a type of Internet marketing used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs. In this model, advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website.
Advertisers bid on keywords that their target market will use as search terms when they are looking for their product or service. When a user types a keyword matching the advertiser's keyword, or views a page with relevant content, the ad may be shown. These ads are called "Sponsored links" or "sponsored ads" and appear next to or above the organic results on search engine results pages, or where a Webmaster chooses on a content page.
Benefits of Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising:
* You don't pay to display your PPC Advertisement, but rather you only pay when your ad is clicked on.
* Pay per click ads are only shown to people who indicate an interest in a specific topic exactly at the time they indicate an interest by searching for specific keywords.
* Pay per click advertising helps branding by building awareness and educating prospects.
* Pay per click advertising can be tailored to your specific goals (eg Sales Conversions, Site Registrations, Catalog Requests, etc.).
* Pay per click advertising enables you to present relavant real-time distribution of your advertising on a massive scale, local scale, or anywhere in between. You pick the geographical area where your ads will appear.
* With pay per click advertising, you can set a daily budget to control your costs.
* With pay per click advertising, you can monitor virtually any metric to track the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns
Pay per click ads may also appear on content network websites. In this case, ad networks such as Google AdSense and the Yahoo! Publisher Network provide ads that are relevant to the content of the page where they appear.
Jeff McEachron
jmceachron@hrb-ideas.com
Vice President Internet Operations
Henry Russell Bruce
800-728-2656
Monday, November 9, 2009
How to Integrate Twitter into Your Web Site
Today we have a guest post by Internet Marketing guru Jeff McEachron.
Twitter has become incredibly popular, growing by more than 1,000 percent over the past year. One great way Twitter allows you to use its service is to integrate it into your Web site. There are great tools for getting your Web site users to become your twitter followers and vice versa. Here are a few that we have found to be useful.
The first one is officially provided by Twitter. It is called Twitter Widgets (http://twitter.com/widgets). You get to choose if you want to put it directly on one of your social profiles or if you would like to put it somewhere else. This widget system allows users to put their Twitter updates somewhere other than their main Twitter feed, such as Facebook, your Web site or your blog. This greatly increases visibility of your Twitter updates to those who might find it interesting.
If you are looking for a quick way for people browsing your Web site to follow you more easily, you may want to install a Twitter Button (http://www.twitterbuttons.com/).
This is useful for someone who visits your Web site and realizes that they share a common interest with you or find that what you have to say is particularly interesting to them. They will then be able to click on a simple button and start following you on Twitter.
Another way to integrate Twitter is to allow users to share your Web site with others by making a Tweet. TwitThis (http://www.twitthis.com/) is a service that allows you to put a button on your Web site that, when clicked, will instantly ready a Tweet with a link back to the Web site they visited. It really is instant sharing, and that does great things in terms of visibility for your Web site and your content.
These aren’t all of the tools that are available for integrating Twitter into your Web site, because there are more and more popping up all the time.
This information is a first step to awareness about some of the most basic tools out there, because the simple ones are often the most effective. The right combination of Web site design and social media marketing integration helps improve the number of followers you have and the amount of interest generated for your Web site. Happy Tweeting.
About the author: Jeff McEachron, VP of Internet Operations for Henry Russell Bruce, a 36 year old strategic marketing and Internet marketing firm (http://www.hrb-ideas.com) with offices in Davenport and Cedar Rapids. He can be reached at 800-728-2656 or jmceachron@hrb-ideas.com.
Twitter has become incredibly popular, growing by more than 1,000 percent over the past year. One great way Twitter allows you to use its service is to integrate it into your Web site. There are great tools for getting your Web site users to become your twitter followers and vice versa. Here are a few that we have found to be useful.
The first one is officially provided by Twitter. It is called Twitter Widgets (http://twitter.com/widgets). You get to choose if you want to put it directly on one of your social profiles or if you would like to put it somewhere else. This widget system allows users to put their Twitter updates somewhere other than their main Twitter feed, such as Facebook, your Web site or your blog. This greatly increases visibility of your Twitter updates to those who might find it interesting.
If you are looking for a quick way for people browsing your Web site to follow you more easily, you may want to install a Twitter Button (http://www.twitterbuttons.com/).
This is useful for someone who visits your Web site and realizes that they share a common interest with you or find that what you have to say is particularly interesting to them. They will then be able to click on a simple button and start following you on Twitter.
Another way to integrate Twitter is to allow users to share your Web site with others by making a Tweet. TwitThis (http://www.twitthis.com/) is a service that allows you to put a button on your Web site that, when clicked, will instantly ready a Tweet with a link back to the Web site they visited. It really is instant sharing, and that does great things in terms of visibility for your Web site and your content.
These aren’t all of the tools that are available for integrating Twitter into your Web site, because there are more and more popping up all the time.
This information is a first step to awareness about some of the most basic tools out there, because the simple ones are often the most effective. The right combination of Web site design and social media marketing integration helps improve the number of followers you have and the amount of interest generated for your Web site. Happy Tweeting.
About the author: Jeff McEachron, VP of Internet Operations for Henry Russell Bruce, a 36 year old strategic marketing and Internet marketing firm (http://www.hrb-ideas.com) with offices in Davenport and Cedar Rapids. He can be reached at 800-728-2656 or jmceachron@hrb-ideas.com.
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