Smart Marketing

Are you struggling to get your content shared and attract new customers?

Are you solely relying on paid media channels to drive traffic and leads to your business?

If so, you need to consider shifting your mindset and marketing strategy toward being USEFUL.

Too many marketers focus too much of their time, attention and budget on automation and optimizing the marketing funnel for conversions and not enough time in creating content that their potential customers can actually USE.

Understanding this concept will fundamentally change your thinking, allow you to build a brand and not just company, and exponentially produce more conversions for a lot less money.

To develop a winning digital marketing strategy you need to:

1. Clearly identify your business objectives 
2. Define your Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) - metrics driving toward your business objectives 
3. Do your research and identify strategies that have worked for similar businesses 
4. Stay focused and scale up as needed  

By following these key points you'll be in a better position to build out your strategy and assure that your marketing budget is moving in the right direction.

Your brand strategy is who you are as a company. It's why you existing. It's where you are going. It's how you are going to get there. It's a living, breathing document that represents all of these elements. In this episode of Smart Marketing, you'll learn how to incorporate your brand strategy into your marketing campaigns so you win attention, convert better, and build a loyal customer base to serve as brand ambassadors for the lifetime of your brand.

Your contract of expectations are terms that you establish with your target audience to reaffirm your brand promise and strengthen the trust they have with your brand. Think satisfaction guarantees, service warranties, and other terms that lower the friction in a transaction. In this episode of Smart Marketing, you'll learn how to determine if a contract of expectations is right for your brand and how to craft one.

Your brand promise is a set of expectations on the tangible and intangible benefits of your products and services. It lowers the defensive nature that your target audience has before buying from you. It solidifies trust. It creates another competitive advantage for your company. It's one of the most critical reasons why marketing campaigns convert well. In this episode of Smart Marketing, you'll learn the steps to craft your own brand promise so you can increase trust with your target audience and convert better in your marketing campaigns.

Your brand story is a combination of all your brand elements (e.g. purpose, mission, vision, etc.) package in a narrative that speaks to your target audience. It starts by digging deep into the core problems that your company solved in the beginning, how your company solved that problem, and then finishes with painting a picture of how your company will continue to solve that problem in the future. In this episode of Smart Marketing, you'll learn the steps to developing an effective brand story that resonates with your target audience and propels them to engage further with your brand.

Defining all aspects of your primary target audience is a critical step in creating effective marketing campaigns. Your primary target audience includes everything from demographics, geographics, super cultures, subcultures, needs, behaviors, mindset (psychographics), lifestyle, and more. In this episode of Smart Marketing,  you'll learn the necessary steps in defining a primary target audience that is right for your company.

Your brand is a living breathing organism that has the same distinct personality characteristics as you and me. Brand personality characteristics are the manifestations of the core values and essence (feeling and quality) behind your brand. It affects the tone of voice in your copy. It provides a set of rules and limits for how you communicate with your target audience. A strongly defined brand personality will help you capture and keep the attention of your target audience so you keep them engaged and interested throughout all the experiences (e.g. website, ads, social media posts, etc.) with your company. In this episode of Smart Marketing, you'll learn how to shape your own brand personality characteristics and create remarkable experiences for your prospects and customers.

Your brand value proposition is a mix of tangible and intangible benefits that your company provides to your target audience. In order to develop a strong value proposition, you need to understand what the market demands and how your competition is positioning themselves in the market so you can develop a stronger position and win throughout all marketing channels. In this episode of Smart Marketing, you'll learn all the steps necessary to develop a value proposition that will crush your competition and grow your company.

Your brand essence is how your brand makes people feel. It's the fundamental quality or nature of your brand summed up in one or two words. Understanding how people in your target audience want to feel is the reason why they will choose your company and continue to buy from you. In this episode of Smart Marketing, you'll learn the steps to create your brand essence that resonates with your target audience and propels them to engage with your brand.

Your brand core values represent everything your company believes in. It's an emotional connection between you and your audience. Trust is built when your brand values align with the values of your audience. Value alignment is also the reason when your customers choose to do business with you. In this episode of Smart Marketing, you'll learn the process of developing your own brand core values.

Your brand vision represents where you are going and why the market should care. It provides a roadmap for how your company will fulfill its brand purpose and brand mission. In this episode of Smart Marketing, you'll learn how to develop a strong brand vision to guide the direction of your company and marketing campaigns.

Need better results from your marketing campaigns? Want to stop struggling in determining what kind of content to create? Well, it all starts with building a brand strategy and a brand mission. Your brand strategy is the north star of your company and your brand mission is how you are going to get there. In this episode of Smart Marketing, you will learn how to walk away with 3 things:  

1. The role Brand Mission plays in your marketing campaigns 
2. Critical questions to extract the ideas you need from your team
3. The structure of a Brand Mission and exactly how to craft one

Are you struggling to develop ideas for content or how to shift your content based on the current time? If so, you need to reference a brand strategy. The problem for most organizations is that they don't have one. In this episode of Smart Marketing, you'll learn how to develop your brand strategy starting with Brand Purpose - why you exist. 

In this episode, I interview branding expert Melissa Fritchey to provide specific strategies you can employ to position your brand for the new norm.