Promise Marketing Blog

Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

Get 100 Ways to Build Your Business

Monday, December 19, 2011 —

Have you ever tried to think up new ways to market, manage, or build your business and found yourself at a complete loss for ideas? I think it happens to everyone. I have to admit, it even happens to us, despite the fact that we’re a marketing company. I’m not sure if it’s because we spend so much time being creative on behalf of others that we just run out of gas for ourselves, or if it’s because we spend so much time dreaming up new ideas that it’s hard to come up with something that feels truly revolutionary for ourselves.

Well, we’ve solved that problem! Last year, we came up with the crazy idea of trying to get 20 of our favorite thought leaders to share five ideas that would help businesses innovate, grow, or manage themselves better. We contacted a few people, who loved the idea, and our big project for 2011, 100 Ways to Build Your Business in 2012 was born.

After several months of hard work, we’re pleased to share these great ideas with you. The book includes thoughts on marketing/PR, web/social media, management, and video/photo, so you are sure to find something that is applicable to your business! Best of all, you can also sign up to receive a monthly tips from the ebook for the next year. (Because seriously, who can remember or implement 100 ideas all at once?)

You can download the free e-book and sign up for the monthly emails at the 100 Ways to Build Your Business website.

Our best wishes for a busy and productive 2012!

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Tags: branding, Buzz marketing, Clear Verve, Communication, content marketing, E-book, Graphic Design, Great ideas, marketing, Public Relations, service marketing, Social Media

When you give, you get!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011 —

Clear Verve Marketing was recently featured in a Profile in Philanthropy from BizTimes Milwaukee. These profiles, which appeared in the BizTimes Giving Guide, highlight the services of individuals in the Milwaukee area who have made significant contributions to the nonprofit community. Clear Verve, along with Catral Doyle creative and Welke Group, were highlighted for our Tri-Adathon work. You can view our profile, along with profiles of other generous individuals and some deserving nonprofits, online.

If you’re not familiar with Tri-Adathon, it’s a once a year opportunity for Milwaukee-area nonprofits to receive some really great pro-bono marketing work. Each year, we take applications from local organizations, select a number of projects to work on, and then shut down and complete these projects in a 24-hour work marathon. It’s exhausting and fun. It’s also given us the opportunity to meet some really great people and learn a lot about the many organizations that make our community a better place. The 2012 Tri-Adathon will be held in spring. Be sure to watch for our call for entries coming in March or April.

We don’t do Tri-Adathon specifically to get publicity, but it’s nice when that happens. Many thanks to our friend and client, Gary Ross from Community Health Charities of Wisconsin for nominating us. We’re looking forward to another successful creativity marathon this spring.

Here’s a video of our Tri-Adathon experience last year:

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Tags: Clear Verve, marketing, media relations, nonprofit, Public Relations, Tri-Adathon

A new social media planning tool

Monday, December 5, 2011 —

I recently spoke at an event for the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee. The event, called Social Media for Nonprofits, featured Wayne Breitbarth, LinkedIn expert, and me; and although it was targeted at the nonprofit community in Milwaukee, much of what we spoke about can be useful to for-profit businesses.

My presentation focused on the results of our recent Social Media Survey of Nonprofits ( get the results here) , specifically what nonprofits value about social media, and the challenges nonprofits face in implementing social media tools for their organizations. Because the Business Journal was kind enough to ask me to speak at this event, I wanted to be sure to deliver some high quality content for them. The result of my prep for this event is a new tool we hope you’ll find useful in planning your social media strategy. We call it the Ongoing Social Media Strategy Wheel.

One of the biggest challenges faced by nonprofit is getting others involved in the effort, either from a participation standpoint or from an implementation standpoint. This is partially because most nonprofits (64%) do not have a social media policy guiding the people charged with implementing social media. If your organization doesn’t have a social media policy, be sure to download our template so you can fix this! A social media policy can help make it “safe” to build a team of people to get the work done, rather than relying on a single person (who often has other work to do).

The other challenge is finding time to plan a strategy. Although most of us would never think of spending advertising dollars without a plan or hiring a receptionist and not training that person on how to answer the phone, many people don’t think anything of just jumping into social media without a plan of action. We hope our new document, the Ongoing Social Media Strategy Wheel, helps address the planning issue. When we created it, we wanted to be sure we recognized the following things:

Most organizations are already using social media in some way. It would be stupid for me to lead you through the perfect planning process for people that are not yet involved in social media. That process won’t work if you’re already participating because you can’t stop and undo what you’ve already done just to make a plan.
Planning is not a one time activity. You have to constantly reassess where you are at, look for new ideas, and pay attention to what is going on in the world.
The world doesn’t stop while you plan. You can’t take a vacation from interacting with your social media contacts while you think. You have to think and act at the same time.

The ongoing social media strategy wheel attempts to show this by using continuous circles. The inner circle illustrates the planning and reflection activities that most people forget. These activities are conducted internally and aren’t seen by the public, but they are very important because performing these activities will increase the effectiveness of the woare the public sees. The outer circle illustrates the activities that most people see. Both wheels are rotating constantly and at the same time.

We hope that this new document will help you continuously refine your communications on social media.

If you want to see the rest of the presentation from the Social Media for Nonprofits event (the ideas work for for-profits too), you can view it here:

Social Media for Nonprofits

View more presentations from Clear Verve Marketing, LLC.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Tags: Clear Verve, Communication, content marketing, Facebook, marketing, nonprofit, Public Relations, Social Media, Social Media Policy

Why crowdsourcing can work for Harley Davidson

Thursday, November 17, 2011 —

A recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article described Harley Davidson’s new strategy to generate ideas for upcoming ads – crowdsourcing. The theory behind crowdsourcing is that a large group of people will make better decisions than a small group of experts. It’s been shown to work for many businesses, including Ben & Jerry’s and Pepsi. In fact, many of us often use one of the best known results of crowdsourcing – Wikipedia. However, in the article, one expert lamented that this strategy would likely result in a dilution of the revered Harley Davidson brand.

I disagree. I think Harley Davidson has all the key ingredients needed to succeed at crowdsourcing.

They have a very large group of fans
Their fans are truly devoted to the brand, to the point of tattooing the logo on their bodies
They care about what Harley Davidson stands for and don’t want the company to water down their brand
They understand their own experiences. Although many of the people who work at Harley Davidson are riders, and they obviously understand their audience, they can’t possibly know everything about what their riders experience.
They already have many brand evangelists who will gladly tell you why a Harley is the best bike in the world

Of course, when sifting through the ideas generated by the crowd, I’m sure the people in the marketing department at Harley will come across more than a few ideas that are real dogs. If there is anything I’ve learned from my years of experience in marketing, it’s that everyone thinks they can come up with great marketing ideas, but not everyone can. Good marketing is about a lot more than just pure creativity. It’s creativity mixed with a bit of psychology, tempered by facts about the consumer, and mixed with an ability to understand how the message will be received – not just what they company wants said. That said; I’m more than willing to bet that there will be some brilliant ideas that the Harley Davidson marketing folks can develop into campaigns that will really resonate with current and future riders. And that’s what marketing is all about.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Tags: Communication, crowdsourcing, customer experience, marketing, Social Media

Phishing and traditional marketing tactics

Monday, October 31, 2011 —

Last week, everyone in our office received an email from Stubhub telling us that our credit cards were about to be charged $2500 for a transaction we hadn’t authorized. The first person to get the email became extremely worried, went to Stubhub’s website – which was down at that moment, and then called her credit card company, who told her they’d received many other calls on the same subject and that everything was probably ok, but to watch her next bill just in case. Soon we saw that everyone else in the office got the email and we were no longer worried because we figured it was a phishing scheme.

This got me thinking – what worried us so much about this email? After all, we receive lots of spam messages every day and usually don’t worry about it. I know my bank won’t ask for personal information via email, and neither will the IRS. I know not to send all my money to Nigeria to become a millionaire (if only it was that easy).

I think it was a combination of factors. First, it was a lot of money, but not so much that it seemed ridiculous. Second, we know Stubhub is a legitimate company and that it conducts business online, so it seemed possible that this email could be true. Because I have never interacted with Stubhub in an offline way, this scam seemed more believable.

I think this is an interesting shift in what we think makes a company “real.” There are many times when people worry that a business may not be real because they cannot find any evidence of it online. This is often a problem for small businesses that need to establish credibility. On the flip side, some businesses need to engage in traditional marketing activities to seem real. Stubhub does extensive advertising to promote its services. We assumed any company with a big enough budget to advertise on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show must be real. Sometimes, direct mail can make a company seem more real. After all, snail mail costs a lot more money than email.

I think it is worth considering what makes any business seem “real.” For every business, the answer will be different. Each business needs to consider how it interacts with customers, their expectations for that business’ behavior, and the many ways they can build trust. I think it most cases, it means relying on more than one method of communication. More communication = more effort and hopefully, more effort = real. (Except when you’re phishing.)

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Tags: Communication, customer experience, marketing

Are you afraid of public speaking?

Thursday, October 27, 2011 —

As a marketing company that specializes in working with service providers, we are always advocating that our clients take advantage of or make their own opportunities to speak in front of potential clients or referral sources. Of course, many of them resist. We understand. Lots of people are afraid of public speaking. Here are some things you can do to try to make it easier:

Use your slides as notes, not as a script. You wouldn’t get up on stage and read a book, would you? People who read their slides to the audience often think they are bad speakers. They may not actually be bad speakers, but because the audience can read faster than they can speak, they may be BORING. Don’t read your slides!
Practice. This sounds obvious, but many people don’t. Practice gives you confidence. Even professional athletes practice.
Remember, you are the only one who knows what you were planning to say. If you say it differently, who knows except you? NOBODY!

Public speaking is an excellent way to build your client base and establish your expertise. It is a long-term strategy that may not yield immediate results, but the prospects you get from speaking are often easier to turn into clients because you have already established your expertise. Take advantage of opportunities to speak whenever you can.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Tags: marketing, Public Relations, service marketing

Business is built one step at a time

Monday, October 24, 2011 —

This week, we kicked off a branding project with a new client that came to us as a referral from someone I met five years ago. Next week, I am meeting with a prospect that came to us as a referral from someone I met three years ago. We are talking with another prospect who heard me speak at a seminar two years ago, and I was just asked to speak at an upcoming event because of a body of work we’ve been building up for the past four years.

Why am I sharing this? Because many businesses are often so worried about the short-term impact of their marketing initiatives that it is easy to forget about or not want to “waste time with” things that don’t pay off immediately. But that’s not how building a business works. Everything you do adds up over time. The most successful and stable businesses are usually not overnight successes (although it may seem like it to an outsider). Remember as you build your marketing plan that it is important to include both short term and long term strategies. Mix different avenues of communication and be consistent. Suddenly, it will feel like you are an “overnight success” too.

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Tags: business development, marketing, networking, persistence in business, Public Relations

What Maroon 5 reminded me about marketing

Thursday, September 29, 2011 —

Recently, I was watching videos on VH1 with my 13 year old. (Yes, VH1 does still actually show music videos sometimes.) While we were watching, the video for the Maroon 5 song, Moves Like Jagger came on. After watching it for a few moments, my daughter said, “This is a really stupid video.” Meanwhile, I was watching it thinking it was a really clever video.

In the video, there are shots of Adam Levine dancing like Mick Jagger interspersed with other people dancing like Mick and actual footage of Mick Jagger performing on stage. At the end, when Christina Aguilera sings, she’s dressed to look like Jerry Hall, Mick’s long-time girlfriend.

After I explained the video to her and pointed out the real footage of Mick Jagger, she suddenly got it and decided that the video wasn’t so stupid after all.

The experience reminded me about the importance of perspective when crafting your messages. One of the biggest challenges every business faces when building their marketing messages and campaigns is remembering what the target audience knows, understands, and cares about. Just because something is important to you as a business owner or as an employee, doesn’t mean your customer gives a hoot about it. This is why defining a target audience is so important. The more closely you can define your target, the easier it will be for you to choose words and images that will resonate with that group of people.That way, you might not be trying to appeal to a teenager using images that only make sense to her forty-something year old mom.

Check out the video here:

Christina Steder is the President of Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve

Tags: Communication, customer experience, marketing

The Importance of a Good Graphic (and Vice Versa)

Tuesday, September 13, 2011 —

I’m all for a good image or graphic. A good one can draw attention to pertinent data, make information easier to grasp, and/or add some fun and color. But I saw one the other day that reminded me we should all ask this very important question when combining data with an image: does this enhance the information I’m trying to share?

So here’s the image (you can click on it for a bigger version):

Here are the good things: pleasing to the eyes, easy to read, pop out colors to show the highest number in each data set, a simple font.

Here are the things I’m confused by:

What do the numbers mean (it doesn’t look like percentage or numbers of people)?
Why are most of the numbers so close to 100?
Why is the one image a female for something called “Unique U.S. Audience Composition Index to Social Networks and Blogs,” especially when females only “win” 103 to the males’ 96 … somethings.
Why is each piece of information pointing to a spot on the woman? (As a pal on Twitter so eloquently put it “The only thing I learned was that gender is all in your head and education comes from your pants.”)

Now, to be fair, I discovered a more “complete” graph in Nielson’s full report on page four:

So the image of a female makes a little more sense with this title. And sentences were added under each category like “She likely lives in New England” (I personally like this touch). But overall the graphic is still not doing much to enhance the information. And pointing to the woman’s random body parts is still nonsensical to me.

What do you think? Do you think the image adds to the information in any way simply because it’s not just text? What kinds of images do you do with your work?

Erica Gordon is a Marketing Associate at Clear Verve and also works part-time at a Milwaukee area nonprofit. Follow Erica on Twitter: @erica_g.

Tags: Communication, content marketing, customer experience, Graphic Design, marketing

Promise Marketing Blog

Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

When you give, you get!

Phishing and traditional marketing tactics

Are you afraid of public speaking?

Business is built one step at a time

What Maroon 5 reminded me about marketing

The Importance of a Good Graphic (and Vice Versa)

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