Part One
SMART STEPS YOU CANâT SKIP
Chapter 1
THE BRAND BEHIND
THE MEGAPHONE
Is digital marketing really that complex? Just start a Facebook page. Publish a blog. Record a podcast. Share photos on Instagram. Whatâs the big deal? We can do all of that in about an hour? Why are we making a fuss about how hard all of this is?
Thatâs the siren call of Shiny New Things. Sure, itâs easier than ever to start. The tools and technologies that can help you be a better marketer are deceptively simple to employ. However, when you take a step back and consider the Scrappy Mindsetâputting brains before budget, marketing like a mousetrap, and seeing ideas everywhereâyou know that you can do better. You have to do better.
Thatâs why the first step in getting scrappy is getting smart. Putting strategy first and ensuring that you know what it is youâre trying to do in the first place. This not only leads to better marketing out of the gate, it also helps you measure what matters so that you can optimize your work for the long haul.
Sounds pretty logical, right? And yet, too many marketers are quick to rush in and start marketing without a plan in place. Thatâs why weâre beginning our journey with three critical smart steps you canât skip. Here in Chapter 1, youâll discover that although marketing has changed significantly in recent years, whatâs behind it has not. The tactics may have changed but the underlying strategy remains. You still need to build a strong brand with something to say. This is easier said than done. Along the way, weâll unpack a simple five-step blueprint you can use to help you define your brand.
In Chapter 2, youâll throw stuffy strategies out the window and instead map a path to marketing success. With a brand packed up and a journey plotted, you can start selecting the social media and digital marketing tools that will take you to your destination. Once again, Shiny New Things distract. Thatâs why youâll need the digital compass presented in Chapter 3. This compass will help you find your way and determine what digital channels work best when.
As you build a smart, scrappy foundation, you need some context to understand how we got here.
THE CHANGING MARKETING MEGAPHONE
Why is marketing so different today? As astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says in explaining a simple little topic like the universe, âKnowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where youâre going.â1 Marketing has always been a tool for helping people and organizations share their wares with the hopes of producing profitable exchanges. Marketing communication has essentially been a megaphone for gaining attention.
But that marketing megaphone has changed a bit over the past several centuries. You could say that new media was born in Germany in the 1400s when Gutenberg revolutionized printing technology, enabling the first form of mass communication. And for the next 400 years, marketing was driven by print, from posters and newspapers to magazines and catalogs. There probably werenât as many books about navigating media shifts as several centuries passed without any major shifts!
It wasnât until the early 20th century that we had our senses of sound and sight awoken by radio, television, and the birth of broadcast media. This new media shift had an easy-to-understand dynamic. As there were only a few ways to reach the masses, more radio and TV ads sold more products and got companies more shelf space, which they could use to buy even more ads. Bigger was better, making this the birth of the Myth of Big as well. Only big brands with big budgets could do truly big things.
While we didnât go hundreds of years before the next media shift, broadcast advertising ruled most of the 20th century. In addition to bringing us Nirvana and 90210, the â90s also brought the first widespread use of the Internet. And with it, the most rapidly evolving form of media. From email marketing (still a formidable force which weâll discuss later in the book) to this past decadeâs Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, each new digital innovation has quickly found its way onto the radars of marketers.
Itâs easy to look at this timeline and think only of the rapid rate of changeâthe chaos that has disrupted the slow and steady climb of traditional, bigger-is-better media. However, we canât lose sight of the baseline. The common denominator. All of these tools help us build better brands. Now we have even more tools to do this. But to fully leverage this new marketing megaphone we first have to ensure that thereâs something behind it.
We have to take a look at the brand behind the megaphone.
DO WE REALLY HAVE TO TALK ABOUT BRANDING?
Branding? Really?? Yes, really.
Like the Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers Weekend Update bit from Saturday Night Live, we really do have to talk about branding. (I said these were steps you canât skip.) Some roll their eyes at the very mention of branding. To some itâs a dated construct. For others itâs esoteric, touchy-feely homework that seems disconnected from bottom-line impact. Marketers may even view branding as yet another obstacle standing in the way as they launch their new digital efforts.
Even in todayâs fragmented culture, brands still matter. Weâre constantly reminded of the climbing user rates on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, yet another metric often falls through the cracksâsomething called âbrand-following behavior,â a measure of the rate at which individuals follow brands on social networks. In recent years, along with increases in engagement on social networks, brand-following behavior has doubled according to The Social Habit study conducted by Edison Research.2 In their more comprehensive Infinite Dial study, Edison and partner Triton Digital found that one third of Americans age 12 and up knowingly follow brands on social media.3
Combine this with the fact that people by and large enjoy interacting on social media, and the opportunity for brands is clear. (When was the last time data reported high engagement levels with billboards and press releases? Has your brand-following behavior doubled for print ads?)
If you need further proof, The Social Habit also shows that even among a large national sample, when asked âwhich brand stands out on social media,â we see itâs a list of the usual suspects: Nike, Apple, Starbucks. At a glance, you could think that this just confirms the Myth of Big. A closer look reveals that these mega brands with millions of dollars and several decades of marketing muscle behind them all only rank in the single digits.
What does this mean for us? It means that these new forms of digital media have the potential to be a great brand equalizer. Scrappy marketers might not expect to fare well on a poll of whoâs the most dominant TV advertiser, but new media levels the playing field in ways that weâve never seen in the history of marketing.
Itâs only fitting that Lee Clow, the adman responsible for some of broadcast mediaâs most prolific work, including Appleâs 1984 and iconic iPod ads, would issue the best caution to marketers too quick to jump into the next big thing without first defining their brand. âThe reality of the new media world is that if your brand does not have a belief, if it does not have a soul and does not correctly architect its messages everywhere it touches consumers, it can become irrelevant. It can be ignored, or even become a focal point for online contempt.â4 In short, you have to be something before you can build something.
The marketing megaphone may have changed, but making sure thereâs something behind it matters more than ever. Thatâs why the critical first step in getting scrappy with your marketing is making sure your brand is clearly defined. As long as weâre defining things, letâs consider the definition of a brand.
SO, WHAT IS A BRAND?
Any good semantic exploration should start in a dictionary with a basic understanding of the word. Surprisingly, in a number of dictionaries our modern business-focused definition has overtaken the wordâs earliest meaning, which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is âa piece of wood that is or has been burning on a hearth.â5 The American Heritage Dictionary shows as its first (not earliest) definition: âA trademark or distinctive name identifying a product, service, or organization.â6 This sense is also first in the Random House Unabridged (dictionary.reference.com).
Not a bad definition, but instead of relying on a dictionary, letâs use the definition I employ when working with clients and speaking with businesses big and small:
A brand can be any noun (person, place, or thing) that needs another party to take action (purchase, promote, advocate, and so on). A brand does this by creating a series of ideas and touch points that build a larger message which draws the desired audience close, engages them emotionally, and inspires them to take action.
Any brand can get scrappy, which is why itâs important to make sure we have a broad definition of what a brand is. Using this definition we can apply these insights and those that follow to any personal, professional, organizational, or product brand.
A brand can be a . . .
âBusiness: Nike, Apple, Starbucks
âProduct: Air Max, Apple Watch, Verisimo
âOrganization/institution: Humane Society, Planned Parenthood, Harvard
âPerson: Professionals, politicians, and celebrities such as Tony Robbins, Barack Obama, and Taylor Swift
âPlace:Communities, cities, or countries such as North Carolinaâs Research Triangle, Chicago, the United States
âSomething undefinable: Things that fall in the spaces between but still need others to rally around them, like our landmarks and special causes
Itâs not a stretch to say that really anything in this day and age can be a brand. It doesnât matter if youâre a solo entrepreneur, a corporate marketing manager for a Fortune 500 company, or a communications manager for a town of 500. Weâre all in the brand-building business.
Now that we have established the comforting fact that weâre all brands, letâs take a look at some of the misappropriations of this construct as we look for a smart solution for defining your brand.
Your brand is not just . . .
âYour logo
âYour slogan, mission statement, or whatever that nice copy under your logo says
âWhat your website says
âWhatâs on your business cards
âHow your employees engage customers and prospects online and off
âWhat others say about you
âWhat you do on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, YouTube, or the latest greatest social network
Can these items be a part of your brand? Of course. All of these items working in concert help create your brand. However, to correctly inform all of these touch points, you need a solid understanding of your brandâs identity. You canât simply say that your brand is your logo or the new branding PowerPoint that your agency made for you. Many marketers grab hold of these brand fragments as itâs an easy way to check that âbranding thingâ off the list without doing the work to ensure that, as Clow said, your brand has a belief and a soul so that you can correctly architect your messages across all forms of media.
But where do you start with this?
YO...