To be influential, one must hold the power to determine, guide and/or impact the decisions and perceptions of others. When applied to marketing, the goal is advocacy. “Influencer marketing is getting others to share your story, generate interest and make your case.” ~ Ardath Albee

Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy focused on capitalizing on the power of people (influencers or brand ambassadors) to advocate for your brand.

“Never mistake the power of influence.” ~ Jim Rohn

By utilizing influencer marketing, your benefits are solid. You gain access to a pre-established, receptive audience which already has a built-in level of trust with the brand ambassador. This helps build credibility. You also get additional help creating content. This content meets your target’s needs. Know your content and message are getting out in the right way, to the right people at the right time.

Is influencer marketing right for you? That depends on what you’re trying to influence (see what we did there, friends?). Know your business and marketing goals, audience, strategies, tactics and measurement. These help determine if influencer marketing is worth the considerable amount of time it can take.

Mapping out an influencer marketing strategy up front can help you minimize the time it will cost you and maximize your results.

Four Keys to a Successful Influencer Marketing Plan

1. Know Your Audience. Make sure you are spreading your message to the (targeted) audience you need to see it, and in the places they are most likely to see it.
2. Know Your Goals. Make sure you have set, measurable objectives. Otherwise, it will be impossible to measure your success.
3. Know Your Ambassadors. The most powerful tool influencers bring to the table is the foundation of trust their audience has in them. This allows the influencer to authentically advocate your brand to your target. It is critical we don’t confuse influence with popularity. TIME does not grant their annual 25 Most Influential People on the Internet influential status based upon the number of followers they have on social media. Instead, they “evaluated contenders by looking at their global impact on social media and their overall ability to drive news.”
4. Know Your Space. Influencer marketing is not limited to social media platforms. The places where the people in your audience are hanging online (if they aren’t on your site) are key to know as those places are influencers. Depending on your audience, you may have better results through specific bloggers’ websites over Instagram (or vice versa).

YOU are your brand’s biggest ambassador. However, when done successfully, having others advocate for you is powerful. Influencer marketing can help you in cultivating the growth you want for your brand.

Continuing in the pattern of marketing and travel metaphors, let’s look at the itinerary for your marketing efforts: your brand.

Is your brand getting you to where you want to go? If its not, maybe its time for a brand audit.

“Businesses don’t own their own brand, they are custodians of it.” – Small Business Marketing Expert Dee Blick.

A brand audit looks at:

• Current brand identity – This includes your logo, tagline, key messages, style guidebook, features/benefits, and color palette.
• Digital/social presence – Is your website easy to navigate? If your company has an ecommerce component, is it easy to purchase items from your site? Is your site optimized for SEO and is it mobile responsive?
• Electronic marketing – This includes your company blog, email marketing, and e-newsletters. (Email marketing gets a bad reputation these days but remains one of the most effective ways to reach your customer and increase your business.)

And the list goes on. Everything is a touchpoint: your collateral, your website, the way the receptionist answers the phone.

Ask yourself, “Does this resonate with our current customer? Does it resonate with new customers we want to pursue? Are these efforts in alignment with one another?”

A few years ago, Front Porch did a brand audit for The Remac Group, the parent company of four shoe and women’s apparel brands: J. Renee, Kay Unger, Phoebe and L’Amour Des Pieds. We looked at all four labels from top-to-bottom, looking for cohesion, consistency and alignment with business goals.

Want to know the results? Give us a call and we love to share more.

Even if you know you need to overhaul your brand, it would still benefit your company to conduct an audit. After all, if you don’t know where you’ve been, how do you know where you’re going?

When it comes to marketing plans, there are a plethora of opinions about how best to approach them. And who doesn’t love a good analogy to break down a complex topic? We certainly do.

Today marks back-to-school for many districts, including our beloved client, Faith Family Academy. Enjoy this day, parents and teachers! It’s always a good one! Commensurate with the beginning of school is the official end of summer travel. We rockers truly enjoy our summer adventures, and we love to share them on Instagram, so check us out if you are in need of a ‘lil travel inspiration!

Travel planning is a great analogy for marketing planning, so let’s GO!

Destinations = Goals

All brilliant marketing plans start with goals. A goal is a destination that you want to reach. If you were planning a trip you would naturally start with your destination. For the sake of illustration, let’s choose Vancouver.

Method of Transportation = Strategy

So you want to go to Vancouver, but how are you going to get there? This is your strategy. You can travel by train, plane, automobile, boat, motorcycle, or you can walk! Depending on where you’re travel is originating, some of these might be instantly ruled out (walking from Arlington to Vancouver … nobody has time for that!). For my family’s summer trip to Vancouver, our transportation strategy was to fly to Seattle and ride the train to Vancouver.

Packing List = Tactics

Up next, tactics. To execute our travel strategy, we needed to pack the following: plane tickets, rental car, train tickets, passports, lodging, sightseeing itinerary, tickets for attractions, and a suitcase packed with the proper seasonal attire. These are all considered tactical elements to make our Vancouver destination memorable.

Goals, Strategy, Tactics.

Apply this analogy to how you want to reach your target audience and you will achieve your marketing goals. Need help getting started? We would love to meet you on the Porch and get rockin’!

The power of social media platforms has skyrocketed.  Social media is now an essential part of building a professional career, a way to stay on top of the latest trends, and connect with companies.

Here are three popular social media platforms that can build your career.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is considered to be the top online source for accessing job recruiters and managing a professional social media reputation. Most professionals use the network to keep in touch with their current network.

But, you can also use LinkedIn to connect with who you want to know. Look up what LinkedIn groups they are part of and request to join those groups. Raise your visibility by contributing to group discussions.

Twitter

Twitter is the online capital of instant and direct communication. It’s a great platform to promote your professional brand expertise.

Follow industry influencers on Twitter.  Observe the topics and trends they are talking about. This can serve as a jumping off point for online and, potentially, in-person connection.

Instagram

Instagram is one of the best platforms to show off your digital savvy. With visually pleasing content, you can display who you are personally and professionally.

Spend time looking through a company’s Instagram account. Note how they are engaging with audiences on the platform. This can create unique ideas for how you can find opportunities and openings.

Keep in mind that building your career through social media is an art, not a science. Pick and choose platforms that your audience connects with best.

How brand ambassadors are re-defining influencer marketing.

In today’s market, college students hold a considerable (and growing) amount of purchasing power. How does a brand target these highly-coveted consumers? Create brand ambassadors.

What is a Brand Ambassador?

Brand ambassadors are a component of influencer marketing.  Typically, they are employed to promote a company’s products and brand personality in their communities. Whether this is in-person or through social media, these ambassadors are generating valuable word-of-mouth impressions. Per research published on Invesp, word-of-mouth impressions create 500 percent more sales than paid media impressions. Nearly 90 percent of consumers report that they are more likely to give their hard-earned cash to a brand recommended by a friend.

Ambassadors are becoming increasingly prevalent, especially on social media platforms, such as Instagram.  Typically, an ambassador will post a photo featuring a product sent to them by a company. Ambassadors often explain the product and brand in the photo’s caption. They also include a special discount code for their followers to apply to online purchases.

Photo by Jens Johnsson on Unsplash

Brands on Campus: Why They Work

Influencer marketing is also common on college campuses.  I have seen ambassadors for companies such as Red Bull, Kind Bar and Bumble at UT Austin. They understand the immense purchasing power of students, especially due to mobile purchasing, and want to reach them in as many ways as possible. Brand reps often give away swag, free products, and sponsor campus events.

Millennials are interested in building their online presence through social media.  They are willing to feature exciting products for companies with little in return. Though ambassadors are not paid, there are many perks to their ‘job’. These include free products, access to brand-sponsored events and networking opportunities throughout the industry.

The True Value of Ambassadors

Brand ambassadors have proven valuable to the companies they represent as well. They increase a company’s social presence by constant content generation. They also provide consumer feedback, personally and from their peers. Companies value this insight from their most-coveted target market.

When I return to school in the fall, I expect to see many brand ambassadors on campus. Some of my favorite past examples include when Kind Bar gave students free breakfast bars during finals week. Express ambassadors, or students part of ‘Express U’, set up tables on campus to showcase the clothing company’s newest products.

I can’t wait to see how brands show up on campus this school year!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about business leadership.  What makes a good leader today?

As luck would have it, I recently watched The Founder, starring the underrated actor Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc, the “founder” of McDonalds.  Turns out, stealing the McDonalds brothers’ intellectual property and last name aside, Ray Kroc had some pretty good ideas about leadership that ultimately led to the success of the company and can still be applied today.

Side note: yes, I know McDonalds is not doing great right now and other restaurant chains are, ahem, eating their lunch. But, at the time, Ray Kroch was able to capitalize on a few key ideas to great success.

How are you going to steer this ship?

A Good Leader Takes a Step Back

The McDonald brothers, the original founders of McDonald’s, spent years perfecting their “Speedee Service System,” the assembly-line style fast food kitchen we all know today. They cut down on costs by eliminating wait staff and paired down their menu to the top-selling items – burgers, sodas, shakes, and fries.

Their first foray into franchising was a disaster. It was difficult for the brothers to control quality standards because 1) they were in California and franchisees were far away in a different city or state and 2) they hardly ever ventured outside of their original location.

So, you can imagine their consternation when Ray Kroc, who they trusted to create and supervise their second attempt at franchising, started suggesting new menu items, sponsorship opportunities, and that the brothers should expand the franchise even more. Who was this yahoo to tell them how to tinker with their creation?

It is a difficult thing to go from working in your business to working on your business, to giving up some control and letting others take on the day-to-day details and hands-on work. It’s a risk – what if a staff person comes back with less-than-stellar work? You have spent all this time growing your business and now you’re just supposed to what, give up the reins?

In a word, yes. In three more words, a little bit. What the movie makes painfully clear is that the McDonalds brothers were never going to grow their business to the fast food behemoth it is today by themselves. They needed right leadership, and the right people, to grow and they needed to let those people take the lead.

Finding the Right People Is Worth It

Initially, Ray sold McDonald’s franchises to a few friends from his country club. This was not a great success. They changed menu items without consulting him first. Burgers were overcooked. Locations were messy. And what was worse, they did not care. Their livelihood did not depend on these restaurants and so they let standards slide.

Ray then decides to fish for the right franchisees in different waters. He found them in VFW halls, American Legions, Shriners Clubs, churches, and synagogues. He sold franchises to regular, working-class people who were willing to work hard and had some skin in the game.

The lesson in all of this: finding the right people is tough. But, hiring the wrong people can be a costly mistake. Is it time to expand your talent search?

Leaders Work on Growing Their People

Let’s be clear: Ray Kroc was not a nice guy. But, he knew good talent and ideas when he saw them.

Ray didn’t immediately squash new ideas from his staff, he tested them out first. He took chances on people who might otherwise be overlooked, because he liked their work ethic. His original Director of Operations, Fred Turner, started out on the line of one his restaurants. Ray initially took interest in him because he literally liked the way Fred flipped burgers.

Ultimately, good leaders grow people. And by growing their people, they grow their business.

A Strong Brand is Worth a Lot ($2.7 million in fact)

Ray Kroc understood the value of a strong brand. He knew that even more than burgers and fries, McDonalds was selling the chance to spend time with your family, a sense of community, a slice of Americana. He also knew he could copy the Speedee Service System all the wanted, but no one was going to go to a restaurant named after him. Kroc’s doesn’t quite have the same ring as McDonald’s.

This is the point in the movie where things take a dramatic turn and we see Ray basically bullying the McDonald brothers into selling their very name to Ray for $2.7 million.

While I don’t advocate bullying, I do suggest looking at your brand and identifying what makes you stand out from the pack. In a world of increasingly commodified goods and services, what is special about your company?

Its an old saying, but its true: what got you here won’t get you there. The things that make a business owner successful at first –a great product or service, hard work, attention-to-detail – are not enough by themselves to take a business to the next level.

To level up, business leaders must step back from the day-to-day, find and grow the right people, and cultivate their brand.  What steps are you taking to get to the next level of your business?

How do you know when its time to rebrand?  Maybe you know that something is not quite right about your brand strategy. Perhaps your brochure copy sounds a little clunky and stale. Or your logo does not render well on mobile devices. Maybe the overall design of your website seems, well, old.

A rebrand can be a time-consuming (and potentially expensive) process.  Before you jump in, ask yourself a few key questions.

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

Does your brand look dated?

Design trends come and go. What worked for your company in say, 2006, might not work for your company now – especially if part of the crux of your business is offering the latest technology or ideas. The Apple logo is a perfect example.

Has your product or service changed?

Where you started out as a company might not be where you are now. A few years and a couple pivots later, your company might offer a totally different set of products or services. Does your brand reflect everything you offer today?

When Amazon first started, they were an online purveyor of books. Now they are an online (and offline) purveyor of everything. And their brand has evolved to reflect that change.

Has your customer changed?

Kids these days. With the hair, and the clothes, and their insistence on disposable furniture… Now, before we jump on the “Millenials ruin everything” bandwagon, consider this:

• Less than 60% of Americans live in the same state they were born in. That may seem like a lot, but according to US Census Data, it was almost 70% in 1950.
• People born between 1990 and 2000 are now more than 2.4 times more likely than the average American to be paying off student loans, and have a median income of $24,973; older millennials’ median income is still just $47,854.

How One Generation Changed The Way We Think About Furniture. Buzzfeed.com 

I can see why Millenials would prefer to buy a dresser from Ikea, rather then a matching bedroom set from their local furniture store.

Have your customer’s tastes and aspirations changed? How do they like to communicate? Does your brand speak to where your customer is now, or where they were 20 years ago?

Ultimately, when your brand doesn’t reflect who you are, it’s time to make a change. Is it time for a rebrand?

In April, we discussed using the start, stop, continue approach to cultivating the growth you want from your 2018 marketing plan. Good marketing begins with branding.

“Branding gives you an exceptionally effective way to broadcast who you are to your target market quickly and efficiently.”– Rick Haskins, MultiChannel News.

Therefore, start by determining who you are and who you aspire to be as a company. What is your vision? “A brand’s strength is built upon its determination to promote its own distinctive values and mission,” Jean-Noel Kapferer wrote in (Re)Inventing the Brand (2001).

Who you are should be based in part by what target customers want. What / who do your customers or clients need you to be? Therein lies the power of the branding exercise. With the right guidance and strategic partnerships, in working through the branding exercise you can determine what your brand should be, what makes the brand relevant to your target, and how to best describe its personality.

Branding Exercise Defines Key Brand Pillars

Great brands have three key attributes:

Conviction
Belief by everyone within your company that the brand is important and that the brand stands for a specific and important promise to the consumer.

Consistency
Imprint the brand into the essence of the organization so it comes alive for everyone it touches. Brand consistency equals earnings consistency.

Connection
Your brand must connect (through conviction and consistency) with target consumers to be effective. After all, as Zig Ziglar said, “If people like you they will listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

Whether your company is established or new to the market, large or small, retail, direct buy, online or MLM, one of the most important things you can do to achieve growth is to create a strong brand. It is a critical component of any business.

Take the time to define your brand architecture. The exercise is valuable. We’d love to help define your company’s foundation.

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Many high schools host a college fair, providing students with direct access to a variety of local, out-of-state and international learning institutions. When I was assessing colleges, I took the college fair opportunity visit with any school that interested me. By the end of the fair, I signed up to receive information from ten different universities. From that point forward, they bombarded my email and mailbox with recruitment material. But of the ten, only one college marketed to me with all the right components that make me not just apply, but also accept.

The Approach

Texas Christian University – it’s not too big, it’s not too small, it’s just right. Coming from a private school with 120 graduating seniors, I was accustomed to a small-sized learning environment. I was used to this dynamic, but I still was not sure if going to a small college was the right choice for me. At the college fair, I spoke about this with the TCU representative.

When I started receiving mail from TCU, my informational packet contained a handwritten note from the TCU representative I met. The note talked about how a smaller population meant a more personal connection with other students, professors, and alumni. This personal gesture showed me that TCU remembered me and cared about my concern.

The Visit

I took a campus tour of TCU, since none of the other schools I was interested in took the time to send me a personalized message. On the tour, our guide escorted my group around campus highlighting the beautiful Horn Frog environment. After the tour, I took a private tour of the freshman dorm rooms. I appreciated that they offered this. It helped me view their living quarters as my potential new home.

It also did not hurt that all the dorms were newly renovated, had close parking for residents, and laundry service available. That’s when I knew that smaller schools could offer more than I expected.TCU made the college experience luxurious.

The Decision

After my visit, I applied to TCU. The university emailed me a few days after I completed the application, conveying their excitement about my decision to apply. Again, TCU won me over by making each interaction personal. No other school had truly made me feel like I would be more than just another student. TCU consistently worked to build a customized experience for me.

When I received the huge envelope saying, “Congratulations Mariah”, I had no doubt that TCU was the school for me.

Now more than ever, the process of choosing a college is rooted in digital marketing. As a prospective student, I was blasted with recruitment emails, targeted Instagram posts, and even Pandora radio ads. The sheer amount of content was overwhelming.  I was nowhere near a final decision on which school would be right for me.

A Critical Flaw

“The school will just feel right.”  I heard this phrase over and over again throughout my college search. Frankly, I thought only parents believed this outdated saying. Digital marketing made my decision process more dynamic than theirs – right?

Today, I recognize a critical flaw in the reliance on social media and online content in one’s college decision process. Social media does an exceptional job of showing us the good: what people want us to see. However, it is impossible to get a holistic view, or “feel” of anything solely through the screen of a device.

Austin City Limits

I attended an event at the University of Texas at Austin called “Best of Texas” during my senior year of high school.  Essentially, this was a massive marketing stunt – a weekend intended to persuade prospective students to accept their admission offers to UT. The Moody College of Communication held a luncheon in one of their buildings on campus. Here, the dean explained that we were eating in what was once the Austin City Limits Live studio, and that the school continues to work closely with the studio today. Sitting there opened my eyes to the opportunities that living in the city of Austin would provide. Here, I could envision a successful future for myself as a Texas Longhorn.

All One Could Truly Ask For

It is because of this experience that I stress the continued importance of traditional, in-person marketing in the college decision process. Visit a school that interests you. If you are still unsure, visit again – I did! Touring the campus and asking enrolled students about their experience first-hand allowed me to weigh pros and cons of the decision myself, not just with the help of an Instagram post.  I am beyond satisfied with my decision. My school pushes me to be the best version of myself, and that is all one could truly ask for.