This week, my Texas heart was deep in the heart of Florida. Florida is my second home. My son is there. My extended family is there.

My heart breaks to see all the devastation left by Hurricane Ian. Some there said it was the worst storm that they’d experienced. Hurricane Ian’s wrath is incomprehensible to those of us who watched it from afar. And even more unbelievable for those who suffered through it. And yet, I was lifted up by this story in the Orlando Sentinel. Ian “couldn’t sink New Smyrna Beach.” The heart of Florida is strong, but it has weighed heavily on me, on all of us, this week, and will for months to come.

But here’s how to help. Wherever you are in the country, if you are so inclined, we are grateful that you might extend your heart to others:

Organizations that are working in the heart of Florida right now:

American Red Cross – Red Cross disaster relief teams have been working around the clock with partners and local officials to provide emergency assistance to those in need. In the wake of such a devastating, widespread disaster, families and individuals impacted urgently need your support. Donate here.

Communities Foundation of Texas – Our local organization has posted a helpful list of organizations to support, that are working to lend aid to Florida at this time. Click here.

Florida Disaster Fund – This fund raised more than $20 million in 48 hours for The Florida Disaster Fund. That is a testament to the absolute generosity and compassion from people across Florida and in fact across the country.

Lastly, we want to say thank you to our clients, advocates and team for the patience and grace this week. You constantly remind us that we’re all in this together and we could not be more grateful.

Is your brand looking dated or tired? Is it still representing your business the way it needs to? One of our new clients came to us for a social strategy and execution. That is what they thought they needed. But, upon initial discovery, we altogether realized that would be shooting money into the wind. What they needed was really a brand refresh.

How Do You Know When You Need a Brand Refresh?

Examine your brand! This is what we did as a team with this new client. First, we did a deep dive discovery process that included several steps:

• A brand audit laid out all the brand’s existing materials like their website, collateral and social, to see if their branding is still relevant and representative of their current business.
• Internal and external stakeholder interviews uncovered brand insights and allowed everyone to see the business through other’s eyes
• A competitive analysis was conducted of the industry that the brand operates in, and who their competitors are.

The Conclusion? The Brand Needed a Refresh.

There are specific and necessary steps to take in a brand refresh to be thorough. We like to follow this tried-and-true plan when we undertake a company’s very important branding!

1. Project timeline – Stick to it and hold each other accountable. This will keep moving things forward with all eyes on the prize.
2. Brand pillars – Define your vision plus three other very important things. Want to know what those things are? We are happy to share them with you! And our process as well. Just call us!
3. Solicit feedback beyond the leadership team – The more internal buy-in throughout the entire process the more successful an initiative and brand your company will become. Your greatest ambassadors are your employees, so make them part of your branding process.
4. Testing of concepts – Your refreshed brand should connect with both internal and external audiences. So testing the concepts is important to find the clear choice.
5. Roll out plan – A disciplined execution of the branding roll-out plan will make your new brand refresh a success. Whether it’s a new logo, tagline, website, collateral or PR, timing is everything and having a plan is key to making the big splash you want to make.

We look forward to sharing the results of three brand refreshes we are currently working on. Coming to you this fall, y’all.

Successful email marketing can be a cost-effective way to market your business. When done right, you’ll be keeping your brand top-of-mind and become a trusted resource for your customers. They’ll look forward to your emails because you’ll be sharing your knowledge and solving their challenges.

Keeping your audience engaged with email marketing, as a part of your overall marketing strategy, is an excellent way to introduce new products, solve an on-going pain-point for customers, give a tutorial, keep your customers up-to-date about the industry, and more.

How Do You Do Successful Email Marketing?

There is a lot to designing an effective and efficient email campaign to be successful. The most important question to ask yourself: Are you leading with the audience in mind? Everything you do should be from THEIR perspective. It’s for them. Help them. Guide them. Solve their problems.

Then ask yourself: Are you overselling? Your brand and your products do not always need to be the hero in email marketing. Afterall, this is an on-going dialogue you’re having with your customers. Establishing a relationship is a longer-term proposition. Don’t oversell. Again, be helpful. Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself: What do I need? What will make my life easier or better?

Getting Started With Email Marketing: Do This Not That

Your email marketing is a fail if it doesn’t contain these four elements. Set yourself up for success by making sure these four things are included thoughtfully in each email you send:

1. Look professional — Make sure the email platform template is set for your brand fonts and colors. Design is key to successful email marketing as well — design a nice header and footer. Link to your social channels in your footer. Stay consistent from month to month with this template and your customers will start to recognize your email and your brand, and look forward to your next email.
2. Have a call to action — What can readers do to learn more? Use a button in your email that links back to your website where the reader will read more, download something, watch a video, contact you for more information or order a product. For instance, if you are linking to a blog post, tease them in the email, but don’t reveal the real scoop…ask them to “Read More” and click the button to go to your website for the rest of the insight.
3. Date and time — When do users want to engage and not unsubscribe? Many email programs like Mailchimp will tell you when the best time is to send emails to be successful. Statistically, Tuesday mornings are the day most people open their emails.
4. Don’t try too hard to sell — Engage your audience and don’t make the email be all your company. Again, be helpful: share hints, tips, tricks. Give away your knowledge and they’ll see you as the industry leader and come to you to solve their problems (with your products or your service.

Most Importantly: Be consistent.

Successful email marketing campaigns provide content to make readers’ lives better. They are informative, not sales-y. Email marketing campaigns provide value, real value, to customers’ lives consistently. Create a schedule using Google Sheets and plan each month’s topic, date, and assign responsibilities. After a while, it becomes easier and easier to stick to your schedule and create smart, thoughtful, nicely designed emails that make your brand the one that customers turn to again and again.

Blogging for Business Benefits in 2022

Is your business blogging? Blogging for business benefits is a cost-effective way to establish your thought leadership and more. One of our new clients asked us last week why they should be blogging. Working towards being the expert in your industry means sharing your expertise.  Blogging is a simple, clear, cost-effective way to do this. When done properly and consistently, blogging brings benefits to your business. And this translates into more visibility, more customers and customer loyalty.

What are the Benefits of Business Blogging?

Business blogging contributes to your marketing strategy. This particular practice of marketing is called Content Marketing. When you consistently write about topics that are important to your audience, you’ll enjoy these three business benefits:

1. Creating new branded content to share. Are you always trying to come up with something to share on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram that supports your branding? Write a blog! This blog post can then become branded content. Share on your social channels, like our client The Slay Diaz Group does.
2. When you offer a behind-the-scenes look into your product, your process, or your industry, you are building loyalty with your customers. Share insider information — like our client Diamond Brand Gear does — and it will help you build a relationship with your existing customers and attract new ones.
3. You can also instruct people on how to do something specific. Help them achieve a goal or get an answer to a question, like our client Spot On Talent does. Here, you are establishing your authority and building organic SEO (search engine optimization) with Google. Putting keywords that speak to a topic in your headers and copy about that subject in your blog post makes you more likely to be the one that Google sends people to on search results when they ask Google a question.

Sharing Your Business Knowledge Makes You a Leader

If you’re a long-time reader of the Front Porch marketing newsletter and blog, you’ll see that we put these content marketing strategies into practice not only for our clients, but for ourselves. We want everyone to succeed, and we want you to be able to benefit from our business experience. So we share it openly. We want you to be able to optimize your LinkedIn profile, practice successful PR, and know what’s important in marketing if you’re a start-up business.

If you’re ready to level up your marketing and demonstrate to your industry that you’re a leader by adding Content Marketing to your mix, let us know. We can guide you through the process and help you set up an easily-executable calendar, schedule and topics. We can even ghost write your blog posts for you, share your content to your social channels, and optimize your content for better SEO.

Altruism is a core value at Front Porch Marketing, and being community connected is at the forefront of our decision making, both as a company and individually. Our team gives back to the communities in which we live and serve. Our team gives our resources — in time, knowledge, and dollars — because we believe to whom much is given, much will be required.

Where might you see us when we’re not on the Porch?

We spend time in our children’s schools volunteering. And they are broad and wide because we are all in different communities. Some of the schools we support are public. Some are private. But the goal is the same: paying it forward to the next generation. Right now, we are hosting two amazing high school interns for the summer as we do every year!

Some of us volunteer at our churches. Others serve non-profit organizations including the Faith Family Education Foundation, and the Grant Halliburton Foundation, among others. In addition to filling our tank, we serve a greater cause. And, organically, it benefits our business by building brand awareness, and boosting brand engagement. We are known as community helpers. We not only help the community ourselves, we help our clients align their businesses with a cause where they are passionate to make an impact.

Community connections are important.

In addition to schools, non-profits, churches and the other organizations our team members spend time with, there are networking organizations for which we are aligned. They help communities on a much larger scale and we are honored to be part of their missions. They connect us to community and beyond. We are grateful for the Fort Worth Chamber, GS10KSB, NAWBO and WBENC, just to name a few.

Is being community connected important to you and your business? Looking to make a difference in your area? Strategically need to align business with a cause? Want to talk to us about anything? Email us here.

Marketing leaders, what are you doing to nurture relationships with your customers?

Consistency and connection nurture relationships. Sure, loyalty and points programs are tactics that bring brands and customers closer together.

But genuine allegiance is an outcome.

A recent conversation with a marketing leader provided inspiration. This marketing leader has had some challenges. But realized the value of marketing.

The company had cut the marketing budget. All the momentum that person built was put to a halt. And then the company brought in a consultant. First, he asked her what was happening on the marketing front. To which she replied, “Nothing.’ And, obviously he was shocked.

How to foster genuine relationships.

Business leaders do these four things:

1. Conviction – Know the brand. Marketing leaders walk the talk. And they demonstrate it every touchpoint. Then, clients and their customers can see it and feel it.
2. Consistency – Do you have a message map for your client? Share the value proposition of the brands you work on, on every platform, consistently.
3. Communication – Know your audience. Then recognize: how do they want to communicate? It isn’t about you. It is about what works for them. Marketing leaders will recognize this and pivot messaging to solve clients’ problems in a way that is meaningful and relevant to the client.
4. Connection – If there is consistency communicating the message, then the connection will happen. But as a marketing leader, how do you deepen the ties with your client and their customers?
   • Weekly meetings with clients
   • Weekly catch-up calls on both status of projects, and how pain points with consumers are being addressed
   • Notes on special days to recognize achievements
   • Boundaries set on both sides, so that both marketing and client are set up to succeed

Marketing leadership: Take inspiration. Deepen connections. Accelerate growth.

We love to partner with smart leaders who value marketing. And, if we can help, let’s talk about mutual partnership to grow top line sales.

Recent readings over Spring and Easter Breaks provided four great reminders for me as a business leader. And I hope they do the same for y’all too.

For those of you who do not know, one half of my heart – my son – attends Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, right outside Orlando.

We stayed at one of my favorite beaches over Easter, New Smyrna Beach, which is a hour drive from my “son~shine.” And, where I purchased a beach condo, aka short-term rental investment property, earlier this year. It is affectionately deemed the “money pit.” But that is a blog for another day. I digress.

Reminder One: Be a GD Cheetah

A beach read was Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. She shares a visit to the zoo and the Cheetah Run. The cheetah, Tabitha, is tamed. She performs on queue.

A little girl asked, “Doesn’t she miss the wild?”

Zookeeper comes back with a BS answer.

Doyle writes that Tabitha would sigh and say, “I should be grateful. I have a good enough life here. It is crazy to long for what does not even exist.”

“I’d say: Tabitha. You are not crazy. You are a GD cheetah.”

That had such a profound effect on me. I later cried as I read the excerpt aloud to my daughter. Without the GD, of course. And I asked her to promise me to always be herself. To be a cheetah.

Reminder Two: Finding Leverage

Not as an emotional experience for me, but profound none the less. Reading the latest issue of Entrepreneur Magazine.

Time is our inventory.

An article by Adam Bornstein explores business growth by not necessarily adding more people. Rather, exploring this. “Smart growth is not about spending more time, nor is it about maxing out your time. It is about finding leverage.”

Reminder Three: Damn the Sycophants

I cannot remember what the article was about. It was the word. The word I had to look up.

I was reminded, although sometimes painful, I treasure those around me who are not this.

Surround yourself with talented people. Those who are smarter than you. Formidable team members push back. They may not think like you. But they make the organization better. These folks fill in for your short falls.

Reminder Four: Being Too Efficient

In a past life, I was ultra-organized. I am a Franklin Covey Planner Training Course graduate for heaven’s sake. Organized all the things in my office and life.

Then, I started Front Porch Marketing. And, had my second child at an “advanced maternal age.”

Words quoted from Edward Tenner in another Entrepreneur Magazine article spoke to me. In summary, big business always has the advantage. However, entrepreneurs combine technology with connection to people. Something big companies cannot do.

Jason Feifer, author of the article, cited Blockbuster and Netflix as an example. Early in my career collaborating with folks at Blockbuster and Viacom shaped me into who I am today. And I am eternally grateful for those experiences. I saw how they tried to evolve. As well as saw what was attempted and did not happen. These learnings were invaluable.

So I hope these four reminders for business that I learned this spring will resonate with you too!

Social media trends for 2022 look a little different than last year.

Social media trends for 2022 will increasingly be about customer experience and personalization. Those agendas are paramount. And, most if not all social media platforms are increasingly moving more and more toward “pay to play”. In other words, platforms want you to pay to get people to see your social media. For instance, this looks like boosting posts on Facebook. Trends that involve an interaction with customers, and especially those that offer some measure of personalization (as opposed to just pushing out a message to everyone) will top brands’ to-do lists.

Here are some of the social media trends we see for 2022.

• Short-form Video – Less is more, and people don’t read. The human attention span is short. So, a video a minute or shorter is plenty long enough. Do a series of short videos each making one point, instead of one long video. Repurpose your existing long videos into shorter snippets and program them for different social media channels. Reveal a different aspect of your company, or solve a different problem on different channels as opposed to playing the same content on the same day on the same channels.
• Customer Service – Customers are conversing more than ever via DMs, Twitter and comments on posts. Monitor these conversations and be responsive on any channel that customers are contacting you on.
• Social Commerce – Customers want to check out immediately on whatever social channel they are on. Social commerce offerings (like buying a dress directly from an Instagram photo) are growing on every channel. Perhaps this social media trend is appropriate for your product or service.
• Paid Social Advertising – Algorithms continue to change. And, platforms continue to ramp up their paid social offerings. There may be a need to add a paid strategy to your organic posts to get wider reach and more engagement. The ultimate goal is connecting with more potential customers, right?
• Influencer Marketing – Micro or local influencers are more important. Work with these influencers who really already love your brand. They can demonstrate your product or service in a way that is unique to them and resonates with their audience.

Content remains king.

Have a plan. Don’t chase squirrels. Plan your content for the year – or at least the next quarter – to meet your brand’s sales goals, branding initiatives, limited offerings, or even just calendar holidays. Planning your content means have a blog and regularly contribute to it. Then, promote your new content on your social media platforms. Build your content marketing practice like you’d grow a garden. Keep at it.

What do customers want to know? Customers want content that is focused on:

• Deeper Meaning – Be authentic. Answer questions that are helpful and offer perspectives that can be touch points for your brand in a customer’s life. Find your commonality. Create your company’s tenets, and do those fewer stronger things in a deeper way.
• Giving Back – Showcase volunteer efforts and donations. A company’s charitable giving is important for 73% of Americans’ purchase decisions. People WANT to love you. Showcase how you are showing love for others. Giving back increases loyalty.

Overall, after the past few years of being disconnected, consumers are craving connection in every aspect of their lives. But make connection with your brand meaningful. Be convicted. Be consistent. Create a connection that will last, create loyalty, and continue these social media trends for 2022 to the years ahead.

AHA Moments are happening again!

AHAs and WHOAs. When the way the world of work is done shifts, like it did Q1 of 2022, you can expect a little bit of both. Our annual team kick off meeting this year was an AHA for us! Unfortunately, not everyone could make it. But it was the first time for us to meet two team members in person. They had joined us in 2021, but we had not all met in person yet. Such a great AHA moment!

We were also so excited to be onsite with our client last week. Their manufacturing facility inspires. Yes, we creative individuals love being in this environment because we can have lots of AHA moments together. Then, some of us go into a cave for a few hours after to recharge, taking all that inspiration with us to create. That meeting was the first time we met our client of several months in person vs via a screen. We hugged, natch.

WHOA, I’m not sure I’m ready for this.

In a catch-up lunch, Friday, a longtime advocate of ours was very anxious. And he admitted, he’s a bit angry. He starts international business travel again full throttle this week. He liked his pandemic routine. WHOA. We all kind of got used that didn’t we?

Another client of ours brought us on board recently. Their team is overstretched all the way around. Trade shows and conference are back now in person, and that adds a lot of extra marketing work to their plate. What’s extra hard for them right now is the fact that some of their clients are demanding online events as well. So, WHOA, they are now doing double the work.

We’ve been virtually ready for this for years.

Between all the client AHAs and WHOAs, it’s easy for us to just keep rollin’. Eleven years ago this month, we were founded on a virtual model. So, not much changed for us workstyle wise over the past two years. The rest of the world finally realized what a great model remote work is, and caught up to us!

Now the “Hybrid” work is emerging. Hybrid offices practice some time in the office and some time remote. According to U.S. News & World Report, the younger generations love the hybrid idea. But, they also love the connection of the face-to-face model. The older generation, who were the yuppies of the ‘80s, working 70 hours a week, now prefer not to be in the office all the time. And everyone seems to still be moving forward, getting things done. So remote and hybrid models are making more sense to a lot of workers.

Different work styles can work together.

Whatever style you or your team members or clients chose, be kind and carry on. You CAN work together! Remember professionals of all industries and levels are going through AHAs and WHOAs of their own as 2022 progresses. It may take some people time to settle in to their optimum work style, and make it work for their family, their team, and their company.

How to make working together easier.

When you’re working together, the key to a successful partner relationship between an agency and an in-house marketing client is articulating goals on both sides. What does the in-house marketing director want out of the partnership? What role(s) will the agency fill? And for those on the agency side: what is the expertise that you are offering and how will it fit into the work and process of the in-house marketing department. Ultimately, what common goal is everyone working toward?

3 traits of a successful in-house marketing director (when working with an agency):

1. Treat the agency like a partner. Be available. Share the wins and the losses. Exchange information and best practices. Work united toward a common goal.
2. Let people do their job. It has been said many times – surround yourself with smart people and let them do their jobs. This is very true when working with an agency. You, as the in-house marketing director, know your brand better than anyone. But the agency will have deep knowledge in how to market your brand to the right people, at the right time, and in the right place. Take advantage of this expertise.
3. Be clear, concise and direct. Communication is key to a great in-house/agency working relationship. Having clear goals and being able give good feedback will make the process of creating great work run smoother.

3 traits of a successful agency (when working with an in-house client):

1. Be transparent. Give real world examples with data and KPI results to show that you know how to do this work successfully. Show and tell your successes that relate to your new client’s business to increase their confidence in your expertise.
2. Flatten your organization when it comes to direct contact. Allow clients to be able to communicate directly with different members of your team if they need an opinion on a specific matter. Shielding most of your agency from the client and running everything through gate-keeping account service people prevents deeper brand knowledge and deeper connections.
3. Prepare to collaborate. Including your client in the creative process will not only make the working relationship work better, the client will have the opportunity to “own” the idea with you. Then, you’ll have no better champion for your idea than your client as it moves up the C-Suite approval chain.

Growing your partnership and working together – in-house and agency – requires determination. First, be determined to recognize the value of the people that you are working with. And then, be steadfast in your determination to succeed together.