I am always learning from my kids. While I try to guide them and nudge them in the direction I think is best for them, the truth is, being their Mother teaches me so much more than I could ever teach them.

Just this week, my high school age daughter was talking to my sons about the difficulties of middle school. Although there were tough days, she actually bore it pretty well, and came out of it with some very sage advice for her brothers on how best to navigate it. And I couldn’t help but notice that it sounded a great deal like the branding advice we give here on the Porch:

“Know Yourself” – It’s a broad, sweeping statement as it relates to being a kid, and the same is true of business; but it is the best piece of advice one can give in both instances. I sadly witnessed many kids trying too hard to be something they weren’t to gain acceptance from a particular group or person. Middle school sharks can sniff that behavior out, and savvy consumers can do the same thing! Embrace who you are and run with it. It is so much better than trying to be all things to all people.

“Be Consistent” – I almost got whiplash watching the roller coaster friendship ride, I can’t imagine how hard it was to live it. The one thing my daughter struggled with the most were girls who were friends in some circumstances but not in others. Friends need to know they can trust and count on each other, just as your customers need to know they can trust and count on you. Be consistent in your messaging. Be consistent in your interaction. Be consistent in your delivery.

“Be Original” – This advice may go against the survival instinct of any middle schooler, because fitting in is everything at this age; but I watched my daughter make original choices over and over again, and I think it served her very well. She chose electives and activities that truly interested her – not just those that “everyone else was doing.” As a result, she has a wide cross-section of friends, and she is a much more interesting person for having taken that route. Branding demands that your business also be original. You must stand out from your competitors. Make bold, original choices. You will be remembered for them.

“Have Depth” – This last one isn’t my daughter’s advice, it’s mine. My daughter has tremendous depth of character, and I admire it immensely. So do her friends. Your business must have the same layers of meaning and purpose to create a sense of emotion around your brand.

Know Yourself. Be Consistent. Be Original. Have Depth. Important branding choices for your business. Important choices for living your life.

Rock on, friends!

Have you heard? This year marks our five year anniversary of doing business on the Porch! And in honor of this milestone, we are keeping the “Five Train” rolling! So hop on board, we’re sharing five things we LOVE to do each and every day! 

So how DO we love to spend our time?

1. Branding – And more branding. It’s the cornerstone for every bit of marketing we do, branding is everything. We love taking clients through our thoughtful brand architecture development process, just as we did recently for Spa in the City. Getting clients started off on the right foot, with the right message, is a great passion of ours!
2. Marketing Plans – After the branding process has been completed, development of a creative and thorough marketing plan follows. Front Porch Marketing’s most recent plan development for The Younity Group was a completely rewarding exercise.
3. Email Marketing – Helping our clients reach their customer base with content-rich, targeted email marketing is critical to their success. Our client partnership with PeopleResults has yielded a highly successful email marketing program. See their latest email blast.
4. Social Media – An integral part of any marketing plan, social media is where we truly rock. Maximizing our client’s presence across multiple social media channels is downright fun. Take a look at The GEM‘s Facebook page for proof of our social media love affair!
5. Mentoring Future Marketing Rock Stars – Such as Sarah Kreuger, our Kid Rocker. Sarah spent the summer as one of our interns, and we loved having her on board. Check out her absolutely brilliant blog, “The Presentation: Marketing to the College-Bound Generation” – this girl just gets it!

We LOVE branding. We LOVE marketing plans. We LOVE our clients. We LOVE our business. We LOVE rocking’ it! Thanks for taking the ride with us!

And last, but not least, we would love for you to join us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.

We. Are. So. Feeling. It.

Our five year business anniversary of making branding and marketing rock for our amazing clients has made us totally mad about the number five. FIVE. 5. Cinco.

And so, in keeping with our five obsession, we present Five Rockin’ Things We are Doing for Clients:

1. Development of the Todomodo Website: TodoModo is a consulting and investment firm. We were able to get in on the ground floor with them – we started with the branding process, defined their brand strategies and then translated it to this site. We loved working with them on this and are continuing to be the company’s marketing partner! We wrote and ran this release on the wire for them among other things.
2. Ellen Hoffman Designs at the Accessories Circuit: Ellen, the doyenne of Ellen Hoffman Designs, is a wildly talented jeweler that we are privileged to work with. We promoted her at the Accessories Circuit at the Javitz Center in New York.
3. The Gem Yelp Event: The GEM welcomed elite Yelpers to a mini “Day in the Life” event. Yelp promoted the program as an educational “how to” series.
4. Feizy Rugs Shows at High Point Market: At a champagne brunch at High Point Market, Feizy Rugs and the finalists in its Haute Trends^TM design competition revealed the initial designs for the collection. Each designer’s initial Haute Trends designs are featured on the Feizy website.
5. Vistage: For the past year and a half, our Chief Rocker has been a member of Vistage, which is a fantastic organization that brings together successful CEOs, executives and business owners and groups them into private peer advisory groups guided by expert executive coaches. These peer groups and coaching sessions help members solve their most pressing business opportunities.

We love our clients. We live for our clients. And there’s nothing more gratifying than helping clients rock their businesses!

Does your website have a personality? How evocative are the images? Is it current? The success of your website and brand rides on these three important questions. 

These days, when people are interested in a service or product, the first stop on their shopping trip is the web. Yet marketers, more often than not, fail to realize the influence their websites have on their overall success.

The goal of web content is to move buyers past the consideration stage and into the buying stage, where they are ready to invest, join, subscribe, etc.

The moment of truth is realized when visitors reach your site – will you draw them in or push them away?

Follow these three simple steps to jazz up your website and hook your visitors:

Establish a Personality

Is your company fun and spirited? Or is it serious and conservative? Whatever your company’s personality may be, your website should convey this clear picture of your organization through its web content. A website is more than just a page filled with words and pictures. It has the power to create a trusting relationship, like that of a familiar face of a friend.

Tell Your Story Through Images

We’ve all heard the infamous saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ Many consumers make choices with their eyes instead of their heads, so images are extremely important. The kind of image you use can mean the difference between success and failure, so choose wisely. Too many generic stock photos can send a fake and stiff vibe to web visitors, turning them away from your site. Real, original photography can help visitors develop an emotional and personal relationship with your organization.

Staying Current Is Key

Creating a website is the easy part, but keeping it relevant and up to date is where many struggle. A company’s web content is almost always the first impression they give their potential customers. I can’t count the number of times I’ve visited a website for one specific reason, and get so lost in all the clutter and useless information that I eventually forget what I was looking for in the first place. The Internet has significantly shortened people’s attention spans, so having an easily navigable website has become more crucial than ever before!

If its time to get your website rockin’ again, one of our rockers is here to help!

After you have done the heavy lifting and spent the necessary time and effort putting together your brand identity, don’t fall short when it comes to your message and execution. Make sure your content is relevant and captivating and then proceed to shout it from the mountaintops.

This is the time to fearlessly spread your message.

And we mean fearlessly.

It is not the time to vacillate. Go big or go home! You have a story to tell. Getting your brand message out is critical. You must believe that in your particular niche, you are the voice of authority.

This fearless quality is what can be the turning point to success – or not. Even if it takes some time to penetrate your consumer base, this confidence and conviction is what keeps you moving forward. The delivery and construction of your message may be refined over time, but it needs to be confident and consistent. Because as our Chief Rocker always espouses; marketing is an art, not a science.

It’s hard and it’s scary when you put yourself out there. But, people will respond to your conviction and confidence. It’s inspiring. Tell your story.

Daylight savings time, warmer days and busy baseball fields are here, and when spring arrives, we usually feel another year is moving forward more quickly than a fastball! As we turn the corner to the second quarter of the year, it’s a great time to slow down a bit and think about how we can get more fresh air, brighten up our homes, and breathe some life into our one of our all-time favorite events – the business team meeting. Yes, I just said the dreaded word, meeting.                                                                                                                                           

It’s time to spring clean your meeting!

Why? Because none of us gets excited when hearing we have to attend another meeting, and most of us have heard or said it numerous times, “that meeting was a waste of my time!” Folks, if time is our most valuable asset, how can we stop spending it in unproductive meetings, and what will it take to change-up the agenda and make it worth it? If it’s time for spring cleaning, where do we start?

We start by changing our thought process to get rid of the old and start with the new. The traditional meeting that is set and run by a boss, who does most of the talking, and calls on individual employees to report their progress, does nothing to engage the team.  I have run these types of meetings in my prior work and learned the hard way that the bored looks, fidgeting, and glances at the mobile phones were caused by my failure to recognize the needs of the team.  I learned that I needed their help in changing everything about how we ran meetings, including thinking of them as “our meetings” vs. my meetings.

Once we are willing to think differently and engage with each other in change, it’s time to ask a ton of questions. Getting feedback is critical, so be persistent until the team is open to talking about the type of meeting wanted. If you have flexibility in date, time, location – put the question to the team and ask what works best. If you can involve everyone in setting the agenda – do it! Ask open-ended questions such as – what do we want to discuss, who do we want to hear from, what do we want to learn, who should we invite and why? Throw out old paradigms and bring in fresh ideas and perspectives from everyone on the team.

As the agenda starts coming together, someone on the team must organize it and everything else about the meeting so everyone gets the most out of the time spent. An advanced communication should be sent to all attendees to include date, start and end times, break times, location, dress code, names of attendees/guests, meeting objectives/agenda and if food or drink will be served. All of this information can be included in one final agenda document, and also available at the meeting. An organized meeting produces the best results, and everyone leaves feeling their time has been appreciated and well spent.

Spring cleaning isn’t easy, but we all know it’s worth the effort. As you consider thinking differently, engaging with each other to make changes, and organizing yourselves for more productive time spent, keep in mind two key things:

• If you are a leader, understand meetings are not all about you and engage others in helping you improve the time spent together. To have a successful meeting requires you to listen.

• If you are a participant, share your suggestions for the agenda well before the meeting and be willing to speak up during the meeting. To have a successful meeting requires you to contribute.

Finally, when you attend a meeting think about how many times you have asked a family member to put their technology aside at the dinner table or when speaking with you. We should all do the same in our meetings. Unplug and engage.

Your meetings will rock! Get to that spring cleaning friends, and we’ll see you later on the Porch.

I admit it, I’m a little obsessed with the Academy Awards. I’m maniacal about seeing as many of the nominated movies and performances as I possibly can, I read all the nominee’s profiles in glossy magazines, I watch them charm talk show hosts on television, and by the end of it I fall a little in love with the people I hope will win.

It wasn’t until I started working here on the Porch that I realized just how big a role marketing played  in these hallowed awards. Film is big business, and winning an Oscar translates into big dollars for the winner. It’s no wonder, then, that Oscar campaigns are born from basic marketing tenets:

You Must Have A Marketing Plan.  For Oscar nominees, a marketing plan involves promotion of  their film, their performance, and themselves in a way that appeals to voters and the moviegoing public. It’s a specific, multi-platform approach designed to build support and influence voters.

You Must Commit to the Investment. I was shocked to read that big studio Oscar-winning films will have had $10 million dollars spent on their campaigns. Studios know that an investment in marketing pays dividends, so they hire PR and marketing firms to guide them every step of the way.

You Must Know Your Brand. Much like a business, an Oscar marketing plan is built on the nominee’s image (their brand, if you will), and in all promotion, the message must stay true to that brand. As an example, this year’s best actor winner, Leonardo DiCaprio, who is normally reclusive and whose reputation is more party boy than serious adult, went on talk shows to portray himself as accessible and even had a well documented meeting with the Pope. Brand, brand, brand.

You Must Utilize Your Resources Wisely. Historically, print ads in trade magazines like Variety and Hollywood Reporter have been costly but successful in the Oscar world; but with readership in traditional  publications shrinking, a reallocation of resources is taking place. Social media is a must (yes – #LeoForOscar was a thing). Attending relevant events such as film festivals, making the rounds on high profile talk shows, and being accessible for major media profiles all have their place.

These Oscar campaigns show the value of strong marketing! Marketing is essential for your business. Having a plan. Investing in the plan. Knowing your brand. Being true to your brand. And knowing how to reach your customers.

The power of good marketing is far-reaching! Hollywood knows it. Do you know it? 

She arrives early at Starbucks for our first meeting, is already working on the first item of our Front Porch Marketing orientation “to do” list, and impresses me with how eager, engaged, and talented she is. An SMU undergraduate student majoring in marketing with a minor in advertising, she is ready to learn, ready to work, ready to rock it.

Folks, if you hear someone rambling about all of the flaws they see in the next generation, make a positive choice – don’t listen to them.  In fact, I won’t list any of the negative commentary I read while researching Gen Y, because there is no reason to give it any cred. Here is what you need to know as you consider making our future leaders a part of your business team – They are:

• Energetic
• Tech-savvy
• Intelligent
• Cost-effective
• Bilingual
• Flexible
• Eager
• Civic-minded

Take a quick peek at Wikipedia and you will learn that Millennials, also known as Generation Y, were born between the early 1980’s and the early 2000’s and are sometimes referred to as the Echo Boomers, because estimates of the number in the U.S. exceed 80 million. Read a bit further, and you will discover that authors William Strauss and Neil Howe, who wrote specifically about this generation in a book titled Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (2000), predicted this group would become “civic-minded” similar to our great G.I. Generation.

Interns Rock!

It doesn’t matter if you work for a Fortune 500 company, manage a nonprofit organization, or own a small business – there is benefit to hiring this generation of interns. In my previous sales management career with a Fortune 250 company, some of our most successful regional sales leaders made the business case for bringing on part-time interns to provide local sales support, and markets where we hired tech-savvy millennials to join tenured teams produced the most amazing sales results.

Nonprofit organizations can also benefit greatly from these hires. With tight budgets, extensive workloads and purposes great but challenging, nonprofits can bring in unpaid interns from high schools and colleges to help out while engaging them in an important cause. A family member of mine runs a foundation for exceptional children specializing in autism therapies, and has numerous interns on board helping to assist these children and their families. It is life changing for these interns and the families in need, and some of these interns have made this their career and purpose following graduation.

For a small business, an intern can make a real difference, and Front Porch Marketing has been rocking it successfully with student interns for several years!  As experts in unlocking the social nature of brands for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and franchisees, we make certain our clients are getting access to experienced marketing and advertising professionals, while utilizing young talent to provide a social media view and analysis when we need it. Rocker Interns on the Porch are part of our culture – it’s just how we rock n’ roll.

We are excited to welcome our Future Rocket, Rachel McMains!

One more fantastic intern on The Porch…ready to rock it.

You’ve gotta have a plan. And when starting a new business, everyone knows that you need a strong business plan. But for some reason, many times business owners forget about a marketing plan, which is just as critical to the success of a business.

A marketing plan focuses on how you are going to get the customers you need to survive. It’s your plan of action – what you are going to be selling, who is going to buy it and how you are going to reach those potential customers and convert them to sales.

Here’s how to create a marketing plan that works:

Who are you? Define your company, the products or services you offer, and what sets you apart from the competition. Positioning your product requires a complete understanding of the market segment you are entering. You must know what your competitors are offering and what makes your product or service unique or a better value.

Include an overview of your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Strengths and weaknesses will be factors within the company while opportunities and threats are external factors.

Who is your target audience? Describe your prospective customer – this can be done in terms of demographics or by lifestyle. If you’re marketing B2B you may define your target audience by the type of business, size of the business, job title or any other factors that make them potential customers. It is important to know exactly who your target customer is in order to plan your marketing strategy.

What do you want to achieve? Write down a list of measurable goals.

Develop strategies and tactics. These are the guts of your plan! Focus on reaching prospective customers at all stages of your sales cycle, whether they are cold or warm prospects. Outline your primary marketing strategies, then include a variety of tactics you’ll use to reach prospects at any point in your sales cycle. This should be a combination of several tactics that can include social media, traditional print advertising, online advertising, blogs, customer events, loyalty programs and email marketing. It’s important to know which media your customers and potential customers will go to for information on the type of product or service you sell.

Remember, a great marketing strategy needs to be realistic and implemented consistently over time. Building brand awareness takes time and patience. If you need a guiding hand, we on the Porch can steer you in the right direction!