Do your members/customers love your brand? With the stiff competition in today’s marketplace, senior management may be concerned with what other organizations are doing. However, turning the focus back to their own organization is important to understand how to make their brand lovable! In the next three tips, you will find the marketing strategy, online connections and personal brand tips to consider for your success in 2011!

If you find these Marketing Tips worthwhile, tell a friend. Here’s the link (E-Tips Registration) then forward a copy of your referral to us and you’ll receive a reward!

Nicki
Nicolette Lemmon, President

P.S. Check out our new video interview with David Costello III, CFO of Securityplus FCU, on Credit Union Sustainability, our video microsite – CU execs talk about the ability to survive and thrive in this economy.

Marketing Strategy Tip – The Power of Focus in Your Marketing

Every marketer is really trying to create energy, an engaging interaction that moves the brand forward in the mind of a prospect, customer or member. A critical piece of creating this type of energy is focus. So often we talk about “brand consistency” with our clients and a focused approach in their marketing planning.

Recently, there was a comment about achieving goals with respect to creating energy, that you must be focused because that helps achieve forward movement. While on the other hand, unfocused marketing scatters the message and will stall any forward movement.

A good example is the difference between a one month promotion and a quarterly promotion. The short-term offer is like a hiccup when trying to get staff members up to speed on the promotion as well as get marketing messages out to members. At LemmonTree, we adhere to the Magic of 7 rule, where it take 7 times for a human to recognize a message, logo or other identifier. It is nearly impossible to get any bang for the buck with a short, one-month promotion and having too many promotions scatters the message to customers/members even more.

Planning the concerted effort, building in the necessary contact points, having the staff trained and easily cross-selling with the new offer is critical to achieving results. All of these pieces focus attention from the customer/member on the value of the brand by virtue of seeing consistent messaging and hearing consistent communication from front-line staff.

Building a brand is more than just the logo and corporate colors being consistent. It’s really tied to the right strategies, tools and solutions across the whole organization. If you want to build a consistent brand, we’re up for the challenge. Email us or call toll free at 1.888.536.6243.

Online Connections Tip – How to Focus Your E-Marketing

When doing marketing planning, the question still arises if email marketing is still working. Interesting that the current economy has prompted so much anxiety that senior managers are questioning why LemmonTree keeps recommending doing the same things in their marketing promotions. While social media has gotten a lot of attention, it is still so hard to track in terms of direct results and the reach can often be very limited.

Cite: E-Tail Marketing: Is Social Media Worth the cost?, MarketingProfs.com, 2/16/11

So, the following chart from a MarketingProfs.com article in February was very telling in terms of influencing people to visit websites. In the Foresee Results of their study, the traditional use of promotional emails was the second highest rated in terms of influencing the respondent to visit a website.

The key in using e-marketing is to have a strategy and a flow of promotional emails that make sense to the receivers. This means using targeted emails by profiling a list using a database management tool like MCIF/CRM. It also means limiting how many e-mail broadcasts are done per month. We recommend 3 per month with two exceptions, special targeted email lists and/or reminders to groups for seminars or special events.

Want help in gathering member perceptions and data? We can do that! Email us or call toll-free at 1.888.536.6243.

Personal Branding Tip – For Success, Stay Focused on Your Goals

As Henry David Thoreau said, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

If you are looking for a new opportunity or something exciting to achieve, goals become the stepping stones. The goals allow you to focus on small victories towards the larger success, making it more likely for you to keep moving, be motivated and see results.

Lack of forward movement leaves a person standing still fostering the feeling that it’s hopeless to reach a dream or new success.

Focus on your goals, taking those bite-sized steps, and before you know it, you are within reach of your dreams and success!

This is an excerpt from the new e-book version of Almost Famous Marketing Yourself 2.0. Want to be alerted when the e-book is ready this spring? Click here to sign up.