Brand marketing is evolving every day. With social media the marketing spaces have turned chaotic.

Customers are informed and picky at the same time. Smart gadgets and apps limit the brand spaces as the choice is more with consumer and less with the brands.

Brand marketers are consistently working on creating brand building paradigms that are more music and less noise for their target consumers. That is why it is fast becoming relevant to follow the rules, polish the basics and keep a brand relevant in the present context.

 

Following are the brand building tips to help you grow your brand.

 

#1 Send Emails

 

Don’t send random emails. Call them something. I am calling my weekly emails ‘brand growth idea of the week’. The one you are reading is the idea no. 1 for 2020.

The emails you send should relate to your product or service (obviously). And, send them on a regular schedule. One-off emails don’t help much because you recipients won’t expect them.

To make my emails unique I”ll only share ideas that I’ll try myself or will only share ideas that I have applied already.

You can think about how you can make your idea unique.

Do you agree that sending emails will help grow your business and brand, but you are not sure about what to send?

Here is what you can send via email.

• a blog post or video about happenings in your business (that’s this week’s idea)
• a commentary or update about market trends. For example, if you are in the business of home decor, then you can talk about current home decor trends.
• information about an industry change and how it impacts your customers
• how other customers use or love your product
• invite to an event
• a prompt to ask a question and help them when they do
• ideas your customers can use.

#2 Share What Is Happening in Your Business

• Write a blog post.
• Make a short video.
• Send a short email.
• Do a WhatsApp broadcast.
• Send the plain old email.
• Do it whenever you have something share-worthy in your business.

For example, we made a video to celebrate 30TH FEB’s 10th anniversary and shared it with a really long post. I was glad to see messages and calls from current and past clients. I also received messages from connections on LinkedIn who had never interacted with me. That meant increased brand visibility and awareness, and potential growth in brand recall.

Don’t wait for the 10th or 50th anniversary of your business, or another big event to do it.

You can share anything like a product launch, when you hire a key employee, an intern (or interns) complete an internship, you or your business wins an award, you open a new location of your business, or launching a new website.

This gives you an opportunity to connect and share, instead of selling which we do most of the time.

It makes the clients know you better, which makes it easy for them to trust you and your brand.

It is also good for your own mindset because it gives us a moment to think and appreciate special moments in our business.

 

#3 Offer things for FREE

 

Free is a powerful marketing strategy when used right.

Mailchimp, a maker of email marketing software, that started in 2001 had reached 89,000 users with its paid offering. In 2009, they decided to add a free offering as an option. Through this,

Within a year its user base grew more than 5 times from 85,000 to 450,000. The free offering branded as ‘Forever Free’ helped grow the brand and revenue in a big way. Last year, the company announced that its revenue will reach $700 million.

FREE works because it reduces the risk for the customer and gives you an opportunity to show what you know.

In the spirit of eating our own dog good, I offered a free 15 minutes call on ‘how to fine-tune your personal brand’.

 

#4 Run limited time / exclusive offers

 

Amazon Great Indian Sale or Flipkart’s Big Diwali Sale generated Rs. 19,000 Cr during the festive season in 2019. Massively led by Amazon and Flipkart, the e-tailers’ year-on-year growth during the 6-day sale was 30%, said the report, which had predicted a 60-65% growth with a $3.7 billion GMV.

All of these come with the unbelievable benefits for the consumer but the businesses end up with a whooping revenues thereby making this a time-tested strategy.

Exclusive offers go well with human psychology.

Offer consulting/advice for FREE for the queries received in a definitive time limit.

Run limited time contests to trigger participation.

Long hour timelines lead to procrastination and eventually delay.

Read here about one such offer we had offered some time ago. Not only did it revived long lost connections, it also led to few good leads.

 

#5 Advertise

 

Smart businesses use advertising to take their ideas to a bigger audience.

When done right it is the fastest way of growing your business.

If you are not ready for the big leagues, you can start by running campaigns to grow your social media following or to bring awareness for your brand.

Advertise the benefit.

You can also use advertising to reconnect with your existing audience and keep your brand top of mind, or to generate leads for your business.

Advertising takes time to get it right. So, don’t stop if it does not work for you the first time.

 

#6 Create Regular Customer Interventions

 

Brand Interventions are the campaigns that generate curiosity, break the thinking patterns and instigate actions. They drive the customer to take action.

Happy hours, DJ Nights, Stand Up comedy etc are some of the popular brand interventions in hospitality. The brand invites the customers to come & experience joy with friends and family, this increases footfall and increases revenue much more than what it costs for those interventions. These interventions create great brand recall in addition to generating revenues. For example, a venue can become popular for staging class stand comic acts over the weekends. This creates solid word of mouth.

Big apparel brands offer a special day of sales for their loyalty members. The ease & convenience not only encourages the customer to visit but also results in higher revenues.

Brands like Decathlon create targeted brand interventions for corporates, schools etc and thereby lead to a higher share of voice. For Christmas Gifting Decathlon promoted ‘Gift a Sport’ digitally to encourage sports as gifting which isn’t usual. They propagated an appealing idea and encouraged action.

When we present a printed social media calendar to the client marketing teams they feel belonged and involved.

Similarly, when I present a pre-launch copy of my upcoming book to the C-suite, clients and prospects and ask them for feedback it creates trust and mutual appreciation.

 

#7 Try Newsjacking like Amul.

 

For the uninitiated, newsjacking is injecting your ideas into a breaking news story done with an intention to generate media coverage and engagement. It is best done in a timely manner because the current event or news that you are using should be on the top of mind.

Amul is a master at newsjacking. Here is Amul’s outdoor hoarding at the time of International Yoga Day. It attempted to ride the heightened awareness about asanas to talk about its own brand, and to share how easy it is to have Amul butter with breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Newsjacking needs to be done very tastefully and shouldn’t just become a piece of information. Also brands should be careful while capturing current affairs.

 

#8 Use A New Channel to Distribute Your Brand.

 

Watch the trends and see where your customers are engaging the most. Use that channel to distribute your brand.

If you are using social media, but not focusing on email, then try that. Email marketing works wonder to grow ecommerce brands and personal brands.

Video works great almost everywhere because of how it allows to create connection, demonstrate expertise or because not everyone does it.

One platform that is gaining prominence in India is TikTok.

There are people who continue to ignore it because they don’t understand but smart marketers know that more than 200 million users in India every month are using it.

Sangeeta Jain, a renowned motivational speaker and India’s first actress in a wheelchair, known as Geet on TikTok, uses TikTok to grow brand awareness for her English teaching business.

She has built an audience of more than 100k followers for her business.

Paras Tomar has used TikTok and Instagram to launch his beauty brand Nuskhe by Paras and make it a top seller on Amazon.

If you are a jewellery brand that deals in junk and fashion jewellery and sell through traditional channels, then you can use Instagram to reach out to millions of customers who are online.

Brands like Mia By Tanishq, Tribe Amrapali, Moksha etc are already doing it successfully on Instagram.

At 30TH FEB, we use both the digital and offline channels for growing our brand.

To grow the branding and digital services, we share information and campaigns using email marketing. But when it is about establishing the credentials of the team, and the brand strategist, the brand workshops, vision boarding sessions and speaking work well.

 

#9 Create A Video Series

 

Why?

Because it helps you connect.

And because it is easy to consume.

If you have never done it before, it’s ok.

Try it at home or office a few times, and you will get better.

Don’t worry about making it look professional.

What you say is more important than how you look. And, it is not always easy to speak in a logical sequence so you may want to write before you speak.

If you are a more fluent speaker than a writer, then do this. Do a trial video, look at what you said, think of points and examples you can add, and if you want to change the flow of how you said it and then make your final video.

Pick a subject that is close to your heart.Give real time examples and boost them with numbers wherever possible.

Don’t be a one-time coach. Create a series.

When you share your first video with your audience tell them how often you plan to do it, once a week, once every fortnight or once a month. Once a week is good but you don’t need to start there.

You don’t need to sit in front of your mobile phone or camera every week to do a weekly series.

Record all 4 videos in one day and then send them later, once every week.

Don’t worry about making long videos. 1-4-minute-long videos are good in the beginning. Focus more on saying something useful and replying to any questions and comments in time. If your videos are useful, the audience will want to hear more.

And, don’t sell in your videos, until you have done 10-20 videos focused on giving value.

And, if you want more success your video (and any type of content) give people your exact recipes for success.

Hope this has inspired you to create videos for your brand’s growth.

 

#10 Create Stories Where Your Brand Is Featured (Story Led Ads)

 

A school friend who is now a filmmaker, created a video for a popular Indian snack brand.

The story is about a woman artisan whose husband packed lunch for her and wrote a note with it. During lunch when the artisan opens the lunch box – she finds the note where the husband wrote that he packed a ‘paratha’ but no ‘subzi’ because he burnt it as he is not proficient in cooking. He further wrote that I am sending something else that you love.

Then the camera pans onto the lunch box, where the artisan reaches out to the lower compartment of the lunch box and finds a packet of that Indian snack brand. If you were to watch that video, you will surely connect and will remember it for a long time along with the brand that is featured in it.

The Rajasthan Tourism campaign from 2018 talked about tourist stories and those became aspirations to many from the world over leading to a rise of 21 percent in tourism with almost 5.19 Crore visitors in 2018.

One of our featured brand stories includes a vision boarding with a client during an annual review. For the pre-launch of the book ‘Brand Like a Pro’ by our founder strategist, we will be featuring stories with the leading business owners and professionals.

Brand stories work because people connect with stories, and when a brand is present in the middle of the story in a relevant way, people remember the brand with the story. Good brand stories make sure the brand’s message is there in the story. They are good for creating brand recall. For your brand stories feature customer journey, capture their experiences and stories on brand-customer relationships.

 

#11 Make Your Product Easy to Use Or Buy.

 

Beachbody, an American company with more than a billion dollar in annual revenue traditionally sold fitness related DVDs. Recently to cater to a growing online audience and the OTT trend they started offering “Beachbody on Demand” where users could buy subscriptions and stream Beachbody workouts to a device of their choice.

Perception plays a big role in branding so if people perceive that your brand it is not easy to buy or experience your brand it will create friction in their mind, and it will impact sales. That’s why pioneering ecommerce brands like Zappos that started by selling shoes online offered no- questions asked return for up to 1 year, and free two-way delivery (that means they even paid for sending a pair of shoes if you didn’t like it). They removed all the friction in mind of the online buyers by getting rid of big reasons why people didn’t buy online.

This is why in India we have a unique system of C.O.D. (cash on delivery) because most customers did not want to take the risk of paying upfront and not receiving the product.

At 30TH FEB, we created packages, first in 2014, to simplify the offerings and help the customers choose easily.

Over the years, we have updated and added new packages, as of now we offer 3 distinct packages.

• Start Up Growth Packages: To help startups from ideation, to launch and through their growth.
• Personal Branding Packages: For CXOs and professional and startup founders with growth mindset, to help establish thought leadership, and make sure they are seen in the right places.
• Brand Marketing Packages: Customized Plans as per industry trends and business goals.

Think how you can make your product easy to buy or experience.

 

#12 Make Your Customer Feel Special

 

Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, the largest sellers of independent music at one point, wrote an order confirmation email that made his customers smile. He called it the “The most successful email I ever wrote” in his bestselling book  ‘Anything You Want’.

He called it so because of the wave of attention and massive brand awareness it created for his business, which he eventually sold for $22 million.

You may have to stretch yourself a bit to create customer delight. Like if you run a customer support intensive business then you can build a bigger custom support team and reply to your customer support emails in less than 5 minutes. Basecamp does it and it plays a part in their big success.

But it may not be as tough as always. It may be as simple as writing a heartfelt email telling your customers how grateful you are for their business. This often seals the bond just because you shared what was in your heart anyway.

We have always believed in gratitude and appreciation.

A heartfelt personalized email or a handwritten note worked really well with the clients where we spoke about their brand story right from the brainstorming stage to where we have reached with the path we sailed together. The surprise element is that they couldn’t even recall the incidents from their startup story that we reminded them through our message. To have someone with you who knows your story so well is always a special feeling, said all of them.

 

#13 Make Your Customers Shine

 

Firstcry hosts different Baby & Kids Photo Contests. Through these it engages its audience, the parents of the kids by featuring them. You can create similar customer centric events.

You can also share customer success stories. You can do it by publishing a video with a happy client or writing a story about them on your website. More than the format, is that you do it.

This fosters transparency, initiates conversations and makes the brand appealing. The apparel brands like Nike, Zara ask the customers to share real time images, video, audio etc. This is called User Generated Content (UGC).

To attract people online, brands use video testimonials, to share customer experiences without much editing. The unedited versions get more engagement because people find them authentic.

When people find a brand authentic, they are more likely to trust it and recommend it to others.  This is the power of making your customers shine.

For one of the women’s day campaigns, we planned a personalized campaign featuring our women clients. We ask for their permission on email as well as over phone. When the campaign came out not only were they surprised but they were happy to see the creative as well.

 

#14 Create a Waiting List for Your New App or Service

 

Mailbox, an email app for iOS devices, created a unique virtual waiting line, for its launch in 2013.

It resulted in a waiting list of 1.3 million users. Due to this huge anticipation, on 7 February 2013, its launch day, Mailbox became the second-most-downloaded free app in the App Store that day.

Thanks to this buzz Dropbox acquired the 13-employee startup for $100 million in March 2013, within a month of its launch.

Smartphone companies now do it before every new launch, because it works so well for them.

This approach not only helps you create a buzz but also excites the users who you can interact with to get feedback on early versions of your product or app. To get feedback to improve a product it is helpful to launch the product to a small group of those who sign up for launch.

The email you are reading right now is part of the Brand Growth Email Series. Before we launched the series, we teased it twice, building anticipation and excitement for what was to come.

The first time 72 people interacted with our FB posts. Out of those 2 became our clients. Second time we promoted the Brand Growth Ideas on Facebook and got the subscribers as per our target audience.

 

#15 Pick Causes that Matter

 

Stay socially relevant. Support causes that aren’t just about profits but those that make you socially responsible because customers like to connect with socially responsible brands.

Social causes give the customer a reason to invest with a brand that stands up for a cause. When customers invest in such a brand they feel themselves part of the cause.

This is what made TOMS shoes immensely successful as a socially responsible company. They pioneered socially responsible one for one business model that made their brand very valuable, so valuable that Bain Capital picked up a 50% stake in TOMS at a valuation of $625 million. As per this model, the company promises to deliver a pair of shoes to a child in need for every sale of their retail product.

When you adopt a cause during tough times, you earn trust and recall. When the customers are concerned and weak emotionally they are more impressionable and what you do remains in their memory for a long time.

Coca Cola Philippines announced that they will be using all their Outdoor Media spaces talking about the Covid-19 pandemic awareness.

The brand stated that it will re-channel Rs 22 crore to the following efforts: provide protective equipment and beverages to health workers, deliver food packs to most vulnerable families, and support affected small retailers in Philippines.

Dettol took to Tik-Tok with a hand wash challenge and thereby educating the subscribers by asking the celebrities to take up the challenge.

At 30TH FEB, we want our employees to be safe. That is why during the recent Corona Crisis, we asked all our employees to work from home, even before the government announced city and nationwide lockdown. We were proactive because it is always better safe than sorry.

By doing it we put both our employees (and indirectly our clients) first because it ensures that we continue to service our clients as usual.

 

#16 Create Hype

 

December 2019, I noticed a post on Facebook asking for enrollments for a 2021 workshop. That’s the power of hype. The marketer behind that post was trying to catch on the year end and new year plans and asking to buy you something that is happening in 13 months.

The message is clear, it is so grand that you need to enroll now.

Brands become big and successful by creating hype.

If your brand has a remarkable story, or when your brand or you achieve something or win an accolade or award, do not keep to yourself or your networks. Move out and talk about it. Run awareness and reach campaigns, let the world know about your story, your actions and your passion about it. This is one reason why Personal Brands and influencers are fast becoming relevant.

Use PR, Advertisements, Series of Emails or Videos to create hype, reassure teams and get going.

We did it In one of the Investment Awareness Programs for our client. We created the placards & instagram prop, that doubled the engagement and participants were keen on being tagged by the brand socially.

Make a noise around your brand and the offering, be open to queries and questions as that are the real time leads that you need.

 

#17 Talk to Customers, Prospects, And Anyone who can be part of your tribe.

 

Celebrity nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar does it well.

She is always sharing valuable ideas about seasonal diets, fitness and nutrition with her audience, and often interacts with them. With her recent 12 week fitness meal plan, she dedicated a week each to a lifestyle problem like BP, Sleep disorder or Vitamin Deficiencies etc.

People engage and ask questions. She takes doubts and queries in a positive light, does live sessions, posts videos to clarify and answers questions. That makes her approachable not only to the people who are keen to take her workshops and courses but leads to growth in her followers among the other nutrition & health professionals. Even her live videos in the current times of lockdown is very well received.

With such interventions she engages small segments of her community each with a specific disease. An engaged community helps grow the momentum for her brand and business.

You don’t need to be a celebrity to do it. You can stand in your store and talk to a customer who walks in. You can ask about their likes, dislikes or what problems they want solved. Once you talk with enough customers you’ll sense what they are after.

For a client whose customers are deeply affected by the current situation and stock market fluctuations, we initiated campaigns to keep the conversation loop open, thereby assuring their clients about everything that is impacting the customers morale. We were sending 2-3 emails every week, creating videos that the services are absolutely unaffected and boosting employee morale by sharing retailers.

 

#18 Empower your brand representatives

 

Train. Delegate. Review. Repeat.

Empower your brand representatives. Handhold them to align and work in line with your brand goals. Invest your trust into the brand representatives.

This not only boosts the employee morale and work culture but also helps you focus more on business growth.

Current times are testing for any business. We reposed trust in our team and asked them to lead the 30TH FEB social communication. What you see on our space is all executed by the team. You see our digital marketing lead, our spaces feature our team, from the lead digital marketing to those interning with us.

All our employee centric activities that boost growth and bring a sense of accountability and belonging among team members are captured and shared in that space. Everyone plays his/her part in the above steps of training, delegation and reviewing. The results are quite wonderful.

I am happy to repose trust in our team and ask them to lead the 30TH FEB channels. Also the contribution is compulsory for all levels of hierarchy as per their job roles.

 

#19 Act as a media Company

 

For a media company content is the product.

If they don’t pay attention to quality, deadlines or the way the content looks, their business suffers and their revenues take a hit.

Most businesses don’t look at content like this.

Those who do, win because their media-type content helps them show their expertise and growth to those who are not their customers yet.

And, through this they create trust which leads to transaction.

That’s why a business that is small today but creates content and brands it like a media company will win over a big business in the due course.

We ourselves are evolving into a media company that helps companies and individuals build profitable brands.

We are all in.

I wrote a book on branding no less.

Then there is this weekly Brand Growth Ideas series that you are receiving every week.

This is why in place of posting random videos, we are hosting a weekly series on YouTube series. Do check and subscribe here so that you get future videos.

And, we are not stopping anytime soon 🙂

Until we create something as powerful a brand builder as Michelin Guide that Michelin, now the second largest tyre manufacturer in the world after Bridgestone, created in 1904.

Small and medium sized businesses can see tremendous growth with this approach; because for big businesses that don’t pursue this strategy, the circle of impact remains till their customers.

But a small business that acts like a media company continues to grow its circle of influence and trust and wins new business quickly.

Another point worth understanding is that a big business can afford to not do it for a while, because they can throw big money at lead generation and keep growing albeit at a low rate.

But those businesses that don’t have unlimited supply of cash can’t find a better growth model than acting like a media company for the reasons I shared above.

Are you a company like that looking for ways to grow?

Then get on ‘creating a media-like brand’ bandwagon and win 🙂

 

#20 Tap Into Social Selling

 

In 2012, sales people using social media to sell outperformed those who weren’t using social media 78.6% of the time.1 What’s more, social sales people were 23% more successful at exceeding their quotas than their non-social sales peers. Social sales people are doing all this by spending just 10% of their time on social channels. Surprisingly, however, more than half of

The sales organizations surveyed by the Sales Management Association believe their current social efforts are not sufficient: 55% say they would be more productive if they had a larger social presence.

Successful social selling hinges on authentically connecting with customers on social networks, building trusted relationships with them, and ultimately helping them solve problems that lead to lasting business relationships.

Your social network needs to be treated as individuals and not just psychographic targeting. The more you connect the better are your chances of trust building and honest dialogues. Have a truthful, defined and strategic social content plan in place, make it visually exciting and engaging to create the right connect.

 

#21 Help Employees Build Their Own Brand

 

Your business is the sum of people that make it.

And, if your employees appear smart, your business appears smarter. And when your employees are visible, it helps with the visibility of your business brand.

When you help your employee show up in the best way possible you also create a space in their heart, and they will want to stick to your business, even when something enticing comes their way.

Freedom to be is the new normal for millennials and evolving work cultures. And they want to explore their creativity through passion projects.

Progressive companies offer learning as a perk.

Chipotle offers to cover the entire fee for their associates to get bachelor’s degree at an approved university.

Starbucks offers similar benefits. Amazon and LinkedIn also offer great learning perks.

Startups are not behind. They may do it on a small scale but they do it well.

Buffer, startup behind a leading social media tool of the same name, gives all its employees $20 per Month for Learning and Development.

At 30TH FEB, we encourage our employees to work on their passion projects as long as they are accountable for their KRAs and there is no conflict.

Employees are our face on TikTok, so the content they create there, helps educate our audience, and also builds the professional brand of the team.

That’s just a start. We are also launching a new series “Brand Talk with Leaders”, where one of our team members is leading the charge and the face of it.

We empower them through delegation, hand holding and trust to run the show on their own.

 

#22 Show The Process

 

One of our clients, a premium home furnishings brand invites its international buyers to explain the peculiarities of handmade weaving.

The clients sit back and enjoy the planned tour of carpet making process, right from the step 1 of sheep rearing, to grading, assorting upto the 11th and final steps of quality checks and packaging for dispatch. This way the client values the effort that goes into the making of premium artsy carpets.

This establishes the authenticity of their product and builds trust for their brand among the buyers. And this happens while their clients get to witness its traditional art of weaving and the weaver stories of Rajasthan. and its traditional art of weaving.

The uniqueness, traditional and heritage value of these handcrafted products is augmented further by inclusion of heritage properties which still adore the 100s of year old carpets from the region.

The entire process is also significant for trust building and branding as compared to the machine woven imitations which can be digitally found at jaw dropping prices.

We being an agency believe in sharing the process with our clients so that they understand and trust the effort that we put in the task assigned. We share the process at four different levels. Watch this video here to understand the process.

 

#23 Wear Your Brand

 

Manu Kumar Jain, Managing Director, Xiaomi India who is one of the most popular Indian C-suite executives on social media, can often be seen wearing the brand t-shirt.

He usually acts as the anchor for his brand campaigns, the new products and even the achievements. The visuals and message work on the positive stimuli and offer higher recall and engagement around the brand.

He acts as the anchor for the brand strategy of Xiaomi. Right from the premium mobile handset bookings to the robotic floor mops. His timeline brings the first look out.

The neuromarketing experts define this tactic as anchoring where the marketing works on the first piece of information. It is believed that the first piece of information acts as the deciding factor for consumers and is even said to set the tone of their purchasing behaviors.

He does it all almost always with the brand up on sleeve, a t-shirt, a video chat in the branded boardroom or a team shot with everyone displaying their love for the brand and that certainly pushes the brand recall much higher.

When a brand custodian at c-suite level wears the brand up on sleeve with so much conviction, it is not just the employees but the consumer too believes in the brand integrity.

Do it anyways. For example if you run a big company everyone would wear the logo on their shirt. Let the employees carry the brand bags and be seen. Have awesomely designed welcome bags for employees. Allow them to feel belonged.

We have not been all out in branding on the sleeve but we have been very transparent and honest with our story. Like how it has always been, thru emails, thru website, thru our social stories. We celebrate our brand all the time in whatever small or gala way we can. Above image is from the mindfulness session we had last Saturday, as the first industry interface to help our team cope better with the new normal. 🙂

 

#24 Launch A Workshop Or Training

 

Workshops! Ah there have been too many ever since the Covid19 crisis.

Launch them anyway.

A powerful workshop establishes your personal brand and in turn open windows for new business relationships. The only promise required is ‘You Deliver What You Promise’. Be clear with your offering and communication. Set right expectations and deliver beyond them.

A workshop or training is not an easy task, it requires passion, planning and diligence. Ensure your workshop is ‘NOT JUST ANOTHER TRAINING PROGRAM’. Make is a work of precision,

• Customize all material and focus on the ACTION PLAN
• Provide coaching and BE SPECIFIC
• Reinforce expectations of performance with REAL TIME CASE STUDIES
• Offer Solutions and AVOID Selling
• Ensure it offers value, engages your audience and helps them learn new things. Offer hand holding, ask questions and quiz your audience to help them understand the problem. A well planned workshop will fine tune your art and empower you as a solution provider.

We conducted two workshops on ‘Personal Branding’ for a marketing/sales team and ‘How to Up the LinkedIn Game’ for a closed group of mid-level and senior management. I am happy to share we got good feedback followed by business enquiry, one after a month and few other right after the second workshop. What clicked is not our service offering but the trust we could build as solution providers.

This is no more limited to service providers, product demonstrations, retail traders are all coming together for online networks and outreach with customers as well as influencers.

 

#25 Stay Relevant! Offer Solution In The Present

 

Linen Club launched the antibacterial masks with three layer linen fabric. Peter England launched the reusable face masks. This is how they are staying relevant in the Covid19 times.

If a brand takes action that is relevant to the current situation, it is seen as authentic and credible. The way I look at it – is – that authenticity is about staying true to what your product or brand promises to do for the customer and this can lead to credibility.

They go a long way. It is important to understand the market trends and customer emotions. Brands need to understand that taking action is important and also come across as a solution provider.

Don’t go overboard or come across as irrelevant. Rethink your marketing strategy.

Brands should extend support and stay customer focused. The mentioned brands shared clear SOPs being followed as per Covid19 guidelines.

Their brand communication, message and tone is assuring and they are also offering home delivery, online measurements etc to extend support.

We do our bit to stay relevant. April first week, we did a series on social media on how brands can sanitize their brand communication during Covid19. Next we launched an exclusive series of ‘Brand Talk with Leaders’ focusing the industry leaders, startups owners, CFOs, volunteers to educate people on how brands are managing themselves at operational, marketing and employee motivation levels to stay relevant.

 

#26 Engage And Empower The Stakeholders

 

Covid 19 did not spare anyone.

Like people, businesses also felt the jolt.

They struggled to keep the employees and customers motivated and needed both, the employees and customers, to go on and survive.

Companies reacted to this in different ways. Some chose to cut their losses and increase their runaway, others saw this as a moment for transformation.

Shopify, the ecommerce giant, was among the first few brands to announce absolute work from home (WFH). It also offered $1000 to each of its employees a stipend to purchase any necessary office supplies to ease the transition into remote work.

Many businesses want to transform like Shopify but they need to tackle revenue, and operations challenge first.

We were no different. Few of our clients wanted to go on a break due to uncertainty. Our focus was on maintaining operational efficiency, keeping employee morale high, more so because we are a young team, and continuing the team learning etc were important. We also wanted to avoid or reduce disruption in personal lives, which is a side-effect of chaos at work and in the world.

We acted quickly and got into WFH mode even before the government announced lockdowns. Later we extended it up to October. We discussed voluntary pay-cuts with the team. They were supportive

We also opened ourselves up to help external parties because that’s the right thing to do. We engaged to hand hold and guide them on how to keep the brands engaged and stay relevant.

We offered special ‘2020 Unusual Times’ rate cards to brands who asked for it during these times. It was the need of the hour and worked well for us in the form of new revenues and for clients because they could get a lean version of our work at a slightly lower price point.

 

#27 Plan And Practice Small Heaps

 

Branding is like breathing.

Like breathing keeps the body alive, branding keeps the business alive.

You need to consistently take small steps to keep your brand alive.

I am sharing the story of a brand that got hit and took baby steps, that I call small leaps, to stay alive.

This brand became aggressive in customer communications. They laid out a strategy to keep customers engaged.

Be it the social quiz, WhatsApp marketing, IVR service for support, regular webinars, small support groups, collaborating with fellow businesses for cross as well as upsell, they did it all. They did it to instill the faith among clients, to keep them calm, and to assure them about the brand and its services.

An entire Covid19 communication strategy was devised to generate engagement through all digital channels. Special focus was laid on employer branding as that instil brand trust during crises.

We worked with the brand leaders to execute this strategy. The plan worked. Because they were able to add value and build trust even when the industry was volatile and turbulent.

Progress is important. Plan one step a time and keep moving forward.

Even during the crisis this brand has been adding new customers consistently as they kept on taking small leaps. We planned many such leaps of customer connect strategies, ranging from awareness, literacy to engagement.

We launched funnels, offered optional custom offerings so that our client could retain the lost revenues and add more.

Soon they were on track and keeping even busier. Good Brands keep communicating and great brands engage. When there is a crisis – they engage more.

So if you think you are going through a crisis, ask your agency to take small leaps instead of stopping what you are doing.

 

#28 Create Small Wins For The Consumer

 

Humans love to win.

Business owners crave to win.

That’s why they come to you…

… to help them win.

When you do that, you win their trust and make them excited about what’s ahead.

You also make them happy and hopeful about the future.

It is easier said than done.

That’s why instead of going after massive wins, create small wins for your customers.

Because win is a win, whether small or massive.

Small wins work well in the beginning, because customers don’t have to wait long to see ‘results’ and you convince them that bigger wins are within reach.

LinkedIn for instance offers unlocking the paid features of LinkedIn Premium for a month and the analytics provide small wins in terms of additional benefits and success on your profile.

They make sure the difference is visible in month 1 and the small wins in the professional network establishes the credibility and features of premium over regular.

So building the digital edge is the big win for the client that we create through small wins like email list building, generating online leads, and sending digital PR pitches. And, these are all backed by well thought out brand scripts and sales messaging so they help clients get to their goals faster as compared to when they were doing all these in silo without a well thought branding layer.

 

#29 Write An Annual Letter

 

Warren Buffet writes to his shareholders annually.

His is one of the most awaited annual letters in the world of finance and investments. Not only investors but also the industry looks forward to it.

Another hugely popular annual letter comes every year from Bill Gates.

You can find all his annual letters on his personal blog called the Gate Notes. This year being the 20th year of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they dedicated it to the people who made the foundation’s work possible. Read the 2020 Annual Letter here.

With an annual letter you open your world to others. Through an annual letter you can share your story, narrate the struggle and success and even make the reader a part of it. This is how people trust and resonate with the brand.

I have been writing to my clients, my team and my tribe for the last 10 years. As we grew from 04 brands to 40 in the 10th year we have been sharing our story, our lessons and expressing gratitude for the clients, team members and even people who encouraged us and kept us from tripping over. I never paid much attention to my reader list, apparently that has been growing on its own because I have kept in touch with the ‘letter’.

Friends and family who probably are too busy to engage with my brand on social media also look forward to my ‘birthday mail’ because that way they come to know what I am up to and find some points to relate to my story.

In my story as an entrepreneur it is the 30TH FEB Birthday mail every year that fetches me maximum responses and all of them are motivating.

 

#30 Improve Your Packaging

 

Your package tells a story.

Premium or cheap.
Sturdy or weak.
Modern or old-fashioned.

So give it as much of your brain power and love as you do to what’s inside.

Create it in such a way that it tells the story that you want it to tell. Like for food items you can tell them a story about its sourcing. For clothes also, sourcing and how it is made or who makes it.

And, give them the info they usually look for. For food items, it will be nutritional information and ingredients. For clothes, it will be size, fabric and color.

A good package can also do a lot more.

It can help sell through copy that builds trust and creates a connection with the audience.

To sell with packaging, communicate the benefits clearly.

Packaging is not only for products but also for services.

Look at Zoho’s Swadesh Sankalp, a targeted and well positioned initiative packaged with detailed features, elements and purpose.

The Zoho Initiative is designed and developed to provide relief to the education and government sector offices that are looking for technology integration in a secure way.

At 30THFEB, we empower brands and their services through packaging.

Be it a design for packaging carpets or pomegranates – we love doing it.

We help through content in terms of packaging a process in financial and IT industry. Also packaging for an entire brand marketing campaign as an Event etc is also a trending product that needs remarkable packaging for the digital world.

 

#31 Get Featured In Media, TV Or Podcast

 

A media or podcast feature is free publicity for you and creates more trust and credibility for your brand than if you paid money to run an ad in that same media.

Getting featured in a program that is not organised by your own brand boosts customer confidence in you.

People who get featured have better edge over others due to credibility associated with the medium that features you, your story or your message.

It is always easier to win a feature if you did something newsworthy. It could be like winning an award, writing a book, being chosen among the Top professionals in your niche, hosting live videos and interacting with the co-panelists. If you wish to begin now, begin with creating a podcast or YouTube channel and put yourself out there.

Whether it is a publication, a production house, a video series, keep it simple, relevant to your audience and your ownself as a brand. Check out my video series about branding here.

I got featured into a number of workshops, business summits and academic-industry interface.

This is not the content we created but this is the content of brands / institutions that connected to me.

The varied but established platforms featured me and this inturn gave a boost to our brand 30TH FEB, the brand I represent and also the work we do.

 

#32 Create and Publish Micro Content where your audience hangs out

 

Go micro.

Especially with the ever reducing attention spans.

Micro content can be a picture, thought bites, a short story or anything that intrigues your customer in about 10-30 seconds.

Micro content usually does not take a lot of time to create or absorb. It could be:

Infographics.

• Short video clips.
• Images and illustrations.
• Graphs, tables or knowledge charts.
• Text blurbs. A client case, an office communication, a small win, a referral testimony etc.
• White paper abstracts.
• Memes.
• Tips shared on social media.
• Short listicles.

You can invest a good 30 minutes to create a micro-post. And another 10 minutes to make it presentable – editing, snapshot etc.

For example, if you run a software business then you can create short snippets about why one coding language is better than another.

Micro content does not have to be knowledge based or serious always. If you run a consumer brand, you can create entertaining videos or mass-audience oriented images with text on them and still grow your brand.

This could be an engaging quiz. A work process or a special day campaign communication for your clients.

If you are a financial planner you don’t need to talk about stocks in all your micro content. You can post a picture of a pocket money discussion of your kids and their piggy bank in it, and link it to financial lessons from early childhood.

Go micro and build a tribe of your own.

 

#33 Help Your Team To Grow

 

Helping your team GROW shall go beyond the regular branding and team motivation activities.

• Show them a vision.
• Create a shared career path to grow. This keeps them excited about the work.
• Have individual employee development plans – we did Vision Boarding for each of them.
• Provide resources. Offer mentoring.

A team member reflects the culture of your company, always. We have assigned one saturday every month for team activities.

• Assisting them in remote learning through short term course sign-ups,
• organising expert sessions for L&D,
• experiential learning through games like Dixit, Story stones etc to boost their creative thinking and even,
• Impromptu team outings (not the regular team lunch and dinner) are a regular at 30TH FEB

That’s how I worked on my team development to help them and the business grow.

Due to this remote work culture as imposed due to Covid19, we all had a major missing for all of the above activities and the very element of doing things together. Basis the discussions that followed, we worked on special tasks and engagement activities for a week to assess what works best with whom.

• The tasks involved coordination and helping each other through delegation practice.
• Noting down and recording task designated hours to enhance productivity.
• Hand-holding them in initiatives that are creative, self motivating.
• Organizing quick meet-ups and assigning reviews cross-functional.

#34 Own Your Mistakes

We are living in the digital age.

And, honesty is still the best policy.

You see as brands, brand custodians, as employees even the best of the intentions can make mistakes.

Such mistakes often happen in the creative process.

Creativity should be about standing out, looking different and staying relevant. But at times, it can become offensive or hurt someone’s sentiments.

Like it happened with Kent RO systems where they went discriminatory by mentioning that maids or house helps can be spreading covid infection for advertising their product Kent Attamaker from the Smart Chef appliances range.

The company’s chairman Mahesh Gupta later issued a statement in which he said the ad had been withdrawn. The statement reads: “Please accept our sincere apologies for having published the Ad of Kent Atta & Bread Maker. It was unintentional but wrongly communicated and it has been withdrawn. We support and respect all sections of the society.”

So own your mistakes and own them fast because the Internet never forgets and it runs at the speed of light, so if your response is slow, a small issue can turn into a big one.

And don’t be diplomatic when saying you made a mistake, just say it like you mean it. Because your followers will know the difference.

You can do it through an email, an advertorial, a social media post. Owning up and offering the corrective action is what responsible branding is all about. As a brand you need to take charge and act fast in a timely manner before the consumer insights turn into conclusions and redefine the brand imagery.

#35 Go Live

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg live streamed for the first time, it racked up more than 15 million views.

It humanized him, people were keen to hear one of the most prominent and popular young leaders who was constantly changing the way people were socializing, networking and doing business.

Going LIVE is powerful.

It can help a personal or a corporate brand by:

• Humanizing your brand and creating engagement.
• Offers an opportunity for the audience to connect.
• Instilling confidence in the brand and making it more approachable.
• Reinforcing your company’s core messages and goals.
• Strengthening their employer brand by removing barriers and gaps between employees and top leadership. Top leadership can go live and invite employees to share their thoughts, concerns, questions, and ideas.

Why should you do it?

• Do it because there is no reason not no. Video is the medium of today and future. Earlier you get on, the better it is. And you don’t do anything except your thoughts, a reason to do it and your phone.
• Because it is a smart thing to do. LIVE sessions with brand leaders give you video content that you can convert to blogs, articles, employee engagement videos, and pictures and clips for your Instagram, and Twitter feeds. And, with a single live session you can become omnipresent in all your social spaces using tools like restream that allow you to go live on multiple platforms at once.

 

#36 Make Your Website A Client Magnet

 

You have milliseconds to grab the attention of someone who comes to your website.

Look at your website and see if it is able to engage a new visitor in such a short time.

Ask yourself,

• Does it hook the visitors in?
• Does it offer a way for them to keep in touch with you?
• Does it feature a call to action, a single action you want the first time visitor to take on your website?

When done right, you can reply yes to all these questions and do them all in the top header and main banner section, called the hero section, of your website.

Why all this fuss about the website, because your website is often a customer’s first interaction with your brand. It is a significant aspect of your Brand Communication.

Have a plan for your website. Your website must have a clear cut communication strategy that lifts the fog for the customer.

• Simplify your message. Let the visitor be the HERO in your messaging.
• Convey what you can offer and how it will benefit the visitor. Guide them to solutions.
• Do not complicate action. Remember you have got milliseconds to offer the hook.
• Establish your story and the value proposition.
• See that your website does have an Opt-in to establish communication.
• Engage the visitor through a give away, a contest for an event or magazine subscription.
• Make your Opt-in impressive. Your marketing begins right there.
• Manage, Update and Engage regularly.

Here is how we attempted the above on my book page.

 

#37 Be A Brand That Responds

 

No one likes to wait and your customers are no different. If it is a customer query – use your response as an opportunity to present your brand in the best way possible.

Do not underestimate the power of response. A response is an opportunity to express as a brand.

Even a negative review is an opportunity to initiate a 2 way communication.

We have dealt with many such responses that were received by the brands we manage. I remember due to a very bad review of a client from the USA Unpublished their Facebook page. That is precisely not the way to deal with difficult reviews. We took action and started talking with the customer to understand what went wrong. And offered clarification and support and resolved the situation. The client got the confidence to publish the page again and it now manages a good rating. We clarified and offered support and the page still manages a good rating.

For other brands, the reviews were fake and done out of a revengeful emotion towards one of the brand custodian. Consistent review with requests to Google Business led to the removal of those unnecessary ratings that included fake reviews from those who were not customers of the brand even.

Such active brand responses signify a brand’s attitude towards customers and its imagery, thereby instilling faith in a brand.

Make it a point to respond at all your brand spaces. Expand the brand presence on digital or social media as per your resourcefulness or delegate it to an integrated brand agency who can manage your brand spaces as you.

 

#38 Brand Activations Fuel Growth

 

Google did a campaign where they were handing cupcakes to the people who posted a lovely photo online with the hashtag #PayWithAPhoto. Google promised free snacks to people who can find a specific photo on their phone in 20 seconds. The campaign was done to highlight the search functionality of Google Photos. A very mindful campaign executed beautifully.

Google installed ‘Pay with a Photo’ food trucks across the city. Activation was around finding one photo that illustrates your story using the new feature of google photos through which one can find their photos by searching what’s in them.

Google gamified the struggle of finding a photo and participants raced against the clock to find the correct photo. Winners who could give a photo got the grub 🙂

The activation led to 42 million – media impressions, 25 million social impressions. That is the power of mindful activations. Brands that activate last long and grow multifold.

Here are the points to remember for any Brand Activation:

1. Have a plan for the activation – it could be brand awareness or product sale.
2. It is good to invoke an emotion through your activation – this works on a longer recall.
3. Do something new – let the activation break the monotony around your brand.
4. Talk about it, use data to reach out
5. Have a campaign ready , work on the questions, excuses, reasons clients can ask
6. Use all your spaces to leverage your activation
7. Create stories from the brand activations, feature, publish and go live about it.

The women apparel brand BIBA sticks to ‘change’ across their brand activation messages. The brand believes it is very significant to get out of the stereotypes like dowry, arranged marriages and even urging mothers to realise their sacrificed dreams on the mothers day.

Make sure your brand activations are well conceptualized and presented sharply. Time your brand activations. Like now is the time to plan your activities around the festival/winter season.

 

#39 No Money Marketing or High Money Marketing

 

‘No Money Marketing’ is when you do not invest in ad budgets or paid campaigns all the time but you consistently work on your brand.

Gone are the days of skewed marketing budgets. Temporary (read campaign centric) marketing too is a thing of the past. In the digital age information is served every second and as a brand you need to stay relevant to stay in the market.

Consistency in no money marketing leads to results. The results can be slow but they are steady. You prioritize marketing organically without huge ad spends.

No money marketing brand growth ideas include,

• High Quality Content
• Referrals
• Community build-up
• Collaboration and Networking
• Local Marketing with reach (be digitally equipped)
• Giving away for Value Creation
• Speaking for Free
• Empowering your personal brand

At the same time, if you wish to go aggressive and all over the audience, high money marketing is the way out.

• Gala Brand Launches
• Celebrity endorsements
• Prime time advertisements
• Outdoor activations
• Newspaper & Magazine Advertisements or Advertorials

Above are high impact-high money marketing plans that demand high involvement, investment and maintenance.

At 30TH FEB, we have been pretty consistent with no money marketing. From writing a book to sending weekly emails, collaborating with experts to featuring them, youtube channel to speaking at gigs, we have done it all. And we have seen the impact, scaled the outreach.

Most importantly have a marketing plan. Think thoroughly about it and create a great pitch. Keep it aligned with your business forecasting and let it roll.

 

#40 Win An Award For Brand Growth

 

The awards are large congregations of certain communities.

Winning an award is about making a mark in a certain community that is out to feature the A listers in that particular business category.

Winning an award is like a third party endorsement. When you win an award you earn a reputation of being an industry leader. you get featured and talked about for your achievements and also how you have done things. It is like half the sell done through the PR and marketing carried by the organisers.

An award is a recognition in any particular community where you wish to lead as a brand. For instance, a CFO award summit would be about CFO practices, processes and authority as a certified finance officer.

For a client it is all about an association with an award winning brand. A recognized brand that is above the competitors. Winning an awards helps a brand in the following ways:

• Set your business apart from the competition
• Boosts employer brand prospects for your business
• Leads to PR boost and even simplifies the post event marketing
• Helps in recruitment and retention
• Increases the chances of face-to-face engagement with media

Do not overthink about winning anyhow. Give it a shot and remember, even award participation is all about boosting the brand awareness and multiplying the brand reach.

 

#41 Transparency: The Secret Weapon for Your Brand

 

Being open and transparent can be your secret weapon for brand growth.

It not only is good for culture, but also good for your business.

It can also win you clients, employees and investors too.

Because it helps you gain trust by opening up and sharing your story.

It can work well for small businesses and even million dollar startups.

Buffer, a $20million+ annual revenue startup, built its brand largely by being open. It shares everything important that they do in public, even their pay rate (salaries) for each employee by name, from co-founder and CEO Joel Gascoigne to engineers, content crafters, and happiness heroes.

Being an open company can help in many ways!

• It saves you from being fake, that’s hard
• Boosts employee morale and belongingness
• Leads to a culture high on morality and accountability
• Saves your brand from the ‘everything is great’ fiasco and that makes you more appealing and approachable
• Builds open and honest client relationships
• Empowers your brand story and the narrative

I remember how in my first meeting with a 30TH FEB business card, I had shown my resume saying that’s my portfolio and I am here to win the first client for my startup!

I did the same with a meeting at Wave Group. I was a rookie entrepreneur and had gone with a concept only. They liked the ideas so much that they wanted me to execute. I was upfront with them in terms of limitations, and offered to do my best. I clicked and I got them as a client. It continued for many years after that first collaboration.

In our 4th year right before receiving the work order from Carrier Midea, we mentioned to the then brand manager that we still operated from a home office)!! It was 2014 and most people did not see Work From Home as credible.

Our first full time employees knew that they would be joining the first independent office of 30TH FEB. We wanted to communicate that they are significant and will always be!

Even recently, during the Covid19 team meet-up (after 6 months and 2 weeks), we shared a candid post emoting the shaky employee morales. And how we have decided to stay #remote for a while.

None of this pulled us down. It helped, infact. One mental burden was reduced and two, we got help and support from relevant quartners. In addition those in similar circumstances empathised and connected.

Think what you want to be honest about in your business. Be strategic about it and then create a narrative around it and put it out in a creative way, in a place where your community, audience and customers can see it.

 

#42 Create Powerful Appeal for Brand Content

 

Savvy Brands strike a chord with people through brand appeals.

It works because people take pride in associating with brands that stand for a cause.

Coca Cola does it with class, cause and emotion. The classic campaigns of Coca Cola – underlining the classic flavour among all variants remains the advertisers favorite. The brand charges up your emotion and instigates action. It is about feeling the emotion so strongly.

Similarly the social brands use ‘fear’ as appeal. Look at the ‘Smoking Kills’ campaign below.

Brands come up with appeals to create a powerful communication based on emotion and logic.

A brand appeal raises the bar by creatively relating an argument to logic that the audience can relate to.

It is a powerful tool to show your conviction. It is about saying something loud and clear.

The world of digital marketing offers a lot of options to Create Powerful Brand Appeal. You can pick up a cause and drive it through your social media. The space offers ample opportunities and options to go creative with your appeal.

Some of the popular ways to create powerful brand appeals include:

• Go Live
• Create Opinion Polls and ACT accordingly
• Volunteering for a Cause
• Create Memes
• Create User Generated Content
• Use Humor
• Collaborate with powerful personal brands

 

#43 Do a Brand Extension Like Richard Branson

 

Virgin is often cited as THE answer to silence those who claim that no brand can be everything to everyone.

Virgin group is probably the biggest brand extension the world has witnessed. No brand has stretched success like Richard Branson. It is one of the most popular case studies with lessons on success and failure.

Brand extension or brand stretching is a marketing strategy in which a firm marketing a product with a well-developed image uses the same brand name in a different product category. The new product is called a spin-off.

Brand Extension is not easy. That’s why it does not always succeed.

To do it right you need to pay attention to its scope, plan and execution. Here’s a recommended checklist for the brands that are planning a brand extension,

• Make sure the brand extension is logical
• Invest time and effort in market research
• Know the stakes of brand extension
• Have a launch strategy
• Create a connect between parent brand and extension
• Ensure that the communication for extension reinforces the brand value

At 30TH FEB, our first brand extension was from an idea agency to 30TH FEB digital. After this brand extension, we also started working on executing the ideas. This was a long time back.

Last year we launched another brand extension, our Brand Workshops to further leverage the branding processes by coaching the brand custodians. All the extensions were within the periphery of business branding and growth.

As an agency we have recommended as well as discouraged some of the proposed brand extensions by the business brands we manage. All of it was logical and data backed. Because that is the right way to decide whether to do or not do a brand extension.

 

#44 Create Frameworks To Enhance Trust In Your Brands

 

Creating a framework for your brand adds to the trust quotient. Frameworks are powerful for any business – be it product driven or service oriented.

Apple’s brand identity framework is so refined that it brings out the aspirational brand imagery right in front of your eyes. Just by looking at the brand identity prism – which is a framework to define a brand identity you can resonate with apple.

A brand framework boosts the survivability of your brand promise by telling your story clearly.

When you respond with a framework it helps your client gain clarity on the brand, its processes, deliverables and in turn sets the expectations right.

Having a brand framework helps in following ways:

• Differentiates your brand from other brands
• A framework sets the expectations right
• Adds to transparency in business
• Removes obscurity
• Simplifies execution
• Establishes your expertise

We use the brand identity prism as the primary framework to outline the brand positioning, to rebrand a business imagery and also to bring about the brand communication strategy.

As our agency was growing we felt the need to establish frameworks for everything. We went on to create: Brand Story frameworks, Positioning and Strategy framework to Brand Management frameworks which till date are customized as per brand requirements.

Get the frameworks defined today for exemplary brand communication and remarkable client relationships.

 

#45 Organise Brand Dockets For Consistent Brand Growth 

 

A brand docket or a brand guard book is an organised document that keeps track of timelines and strategies created in a brand journey.

As a brand strategist I can vouch for the effectiveness of a brand docket. When you have an organized set of activities thoroughly lined up – you know the brand persona being created, its evolution and thereby assess the client’s expectations from it.

                Historic Guard Book Sample

It saves a lot of time and energy when you have ready references from the brand’s journey.

Having a brand docket is useful in many ways because it:

• Makes your brand story evident
• Helps the business owner assess the brand
• Acts as the ready reference for future course of action
• Helps in marketing strategy always
• Simplifies the new team/agency onboarding process
• Offers the opportunity to anytime create a cloud book
• Empowers future frameworks by offering insights of previous year campaigns

                                    Online Brand Docket – a Sample

We have transitioned from the historic guard books to the online or cloud dockets that are created year on year. But they remain powerful for any brand’s growth.

 

#46 Create Actionable Ideas For Brand Growth

 

Ideas are abundant.

What we lack most of the time is to make those ideas actionable.

Creating a list of ideas will help you gauge action. A compact and mindful list simplifies action.

If you are a business owner you can create the list. Delegate it to the vertical heads to help them grow their team and its performance.

Do not start with making the list instantly. Think through the business lacunae, the customer expectations and how you wish to differentiate from your competitors. Do this in one shot and then make a list of actionable ideas. Follow the 05 steps.

• Use the brain-dump technique to start with and write down your first 50 or 100 ideas.
• Practice one a day principle. Or you can start with one a week.
• Start screening them and work on its execution – have a weekly, monthly and yearly plan.
• Track your progress and assess what worked most.
• Create ~ Act ~ Track ~ Repeat

For example when I worked on one piece of content which is the ‘Brand Growth Ideas of the Week’. We had a list of 100+ ideas dumped together at one shot. Post that we scrutinized the list and started working on 05 at a time. That put together we worked on a month long plan, edited it and had our action plan ready for 52 weeks.

You can also keep on tweaking the list basis the business requirements. Keep it growth oriented for marketing purposes, employees growth, client relationships, process design and development etc.

At 30TH FEB we worked on 65 Tips to Create Powerful Brand Content. A varied set of actionable ideas towards all sections of the business that needed work. I would not say we are progressing at all fronts but we are progressing on whatever we have actioned upon.

 

#47 Make Infographics To Simplify The Brand Growth

 

90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual, and that is processed 60,000x faster in the brain than text. That is why, Infographics are powerful.

Brief, quick and very much to the point. They are easy, are a visual treat to eyes and require only a few seconds to a minute of your attention.

Infographics come across as a powerful combination of data, visuals and creativity thereby making it easier to digest and remember.

Following are the reasons why infographics are good content to boost brand growth:

1. They are a powerful way to uncomplicate and tell stories.
2. They come across as a tool to simplify heavy topics in an enjoyable way.
3. Infographics are easy to comprehend and help leave the message in a stronger and simpler way.
4. SEO experts say that the HTML format of infographics are a better way to track performances.
5. Infographics with keywords last longer and therefore help the pages stay afloat on google rankings
6. Infographics are more tangible, as facts and figures lend authority to your content.
7. Infographics are faster than print communication, they come as handy tools for profiling for chat based tools like whatsapp, hangouts and telegram etc.
8. They can be exported quickly to posters, brochures and even leaflets.

Are you starting to get ideas? Start using tools like Canva or Piktochart and get to creating fine, flowy and beautiful infographics.

 

#48 Create a Wow Promotional Offer

 

Netflix is free for December 5 and 6.

The OTT giant announced their Stream Fest for 2 days allowing free access to all its Indian non-subscribers.

The viewers can watch any number of shows for these 2 days on their android app or web without even sharing any payment details with Netflix. Now that makes it a wow promotion as ‘Stream Fest’ will allow users to watch its entire catalogue, series, shows, films, reality shows, documentaries, and more, for 48 hours at no cost.

Netflix has been experimenting with the largest audience base for over a year by offering different sets of promotional offers. An absolute free streaming service over a weekend will actually lead to a country wide exposure of their stories.

The kind of database that Netflix would receive through this campaign would be enormous for their team to launch many more customer penetration strategies. That is the power of a wow promotional offer. An offer that stands out, takes a leap over the competition and leaves the consumer with an experience that stays with them for a long time.

A well approached promotional offer is the brand growth strategy that you need to draw the attention of your target audience. This could very well be the strategy to bring back the focus on your brand, understand the customer preferences and touch base in a more personalized way.

 

#49 Write a Top of The Funnel Blog Post

 

2020 has changed the way customers look at brands. With restricted socializing, the consumer is less outgoing and more available on the internet.

That is why almost everyone is trying to carve a niche online and reach out to their customers. If you want to become visible online and be seen by more consumers from those who are online it is time you as a business owner start working on Top of the Funnel Content.

Top-of-Funnel content is all about the buyer preferences, their interests and needs. Where you create content keeping the user as the centre and not your brand. Allow them to be the HERO and be the guide who helps the hero win.

It simplifies the entire outreach process and makes your brand appealing. You can create Top of the funnel content through a number of content categories like,

• Blogs: Purpose focused, planned
• Website Landing Pages
• Social Media
• SEO
• Video Marketing and Podcasts
• Online Ads
• Influencer Outreach
• Infographics

You can begin with writing a top of funnel blog post. It is easy to execute and is very powerful too.

A good top-of-funnel blogpost will work on two major goals, primarily brand awareness. Secondly it engages the user and begins a brand conversation.

To do that it is recommended that your funnel content addresses the common problem, is not high on jargons and offers details around process, cost etc. So that your customer has all the information thereby converting them into a qualified lead.

The top of funnel content is effective only if it keeps the relationship alive even after the visitor leaves your space. So make sure your blog carries appropriate call to actions and engages the audience.

For example, we have this post here “Battle Tested Brand Growth Ideaz”, the idea of this post is to help businesses with tried and tested growth strategies. It only talks about ideas that help businesses grow.

Find out what is it that the consumer needs and resonates most in your industry. Create a post that educates, helps, and answers common questions or pain points. Once created, keep updating it.

 

#50 Build a Culture of Learning and Growth

 

If you care for your brand then you must care for your team culture.

Because your team, your employees are your first brand ambassadors.

And they are connected with the external world, and many times without your customers.

Ensure that your culture gets reflected in the external elements of the brand. Your internal processes, team and atmosphere too is a reflection of internal culture.

Strong cultures have a high degree of trust and also breed engagement. A Business 2 Community report stated that companies with engaged employees outperform those without by 202%.

How can you build a culture of learning and growth?

1. Make your hiring process employee oriented and offer ease of understanding of work and culture.
2. Invest your time in onboarding new hires. At 30TH FEB, we invest 60 days for onboarding. To give a new hire find their ground in a new place, understand systems and learn the workflow and get in the groove.
3. Launch internships with an Opt-out option. Let the energies and relationships be saved in case there is no synergy.
4. Let employees connect and bond over social media. Leverage your digital spaces through employee generated content, internal brand activities etc together with establishing the brand offerings.
5. Involve the employees in creating a culture by asking their opinions on activities and offering them to plan, ideate and execute plans. Link it to the performance appraisals.

At 30TH FEB we took a leap and strengthened our hiring practices by building a distinctive culture by working on expectations, gaps and attracting the right talent.

Do not wait to grow big before thinking about team culture. We didn’t and invested in our team since we were a 4 people team.

We offered paid applications while hiring for internships. Created a two month long onboarding process together with optional opt-in and opt-outs. This helps us assess what works best for whom and encourages casual connections and creates an open work environment.

I hope you’ll invest in your team culture as soon as you can. It is smart because your team will help you grow faster, if culture is right.

 

#51 A Unique Brand Name Increases The Chances Of Brand Growth

 

What’s in a name?

A lot.

A well thought name can subtly pitch your services. A good brand name is the one that your audience can relate to, that creates a good first impression, establishing recall.

A unique name and its Brand recall is also good for ranking in search engines.

Brand Names can be invented, functional, weird at the same time. They are powerful and evoke emotions like curiosity, trust, and adventure. That leads to consumer engagement with the brand and thereby generating brand experiences that are emotional and resonating. Remember the campaigns like meri wali maggi, hamara bajaj and tide detergent etc.

In present times, it is also important to create brand names that are digitally compliant. Check on the names that, fit nicely in the display image area, are not contrasting with a social media giant etc.

Before you freeze the brand name for a business, a vertical, or a mascot etc be sure of that check that brand name on the following parameters:

Domain: See if the chosen domain name is available, a dot com is the first preference. If not then your country’s domain (.in in India)

Dictionary: Check the dictionary and explore all the meanings of a particular brand name

Search: Go to Google or another prominent search engine and see if the brand name you chose pops up among the top 100 results

Language: Make sure that the meaning of your name in another language is not obscene, derogatory or offensive in any culture

Phone: Call 5 friends and see if they understand it clearly over the phone. If they say yes ask them to repeat it to you.

Trademark: Get a trademark check done via an expert to ascertain the availability of a trademark for the brand name you plan to choose.

The check on these parameters would ensure that you’ll start your new brand on the right footing… And if there is still a problem in finding the best brand name we are happy to help.

 

#52 Start Fueling Your Brand Growth Regime Today

 

Just like we reached the last week of this eventful year.

It has been an amazing journey of 52 weeks of brand growth. Don’t you think so?

Thanks to you for reading, responding and discussing the ideas shared. Your gesture motivates me to keep going.

This time of the year, most of us spend lazing around to kickstart resolutions, plans from January 1. Another lot believes in keeping the year end for holidays, family and friends. I agree winter fog and weather add up to the mood but then why procrastinate till January 1, especially when we know neither the weather nor the mood is going to jump up with energy.

Considering the holiday mood I am giving you a list of ‘To Do Things to Up the Brand Growth in 2021’. Start with,

1. Analyze what went wrong and what went awesomely well for your brand during the year.
2. Was there any effect of Covid19? If yes, what did you do to offset the effect. If you did well, pat yourself on the back.
3. Make a list of tech-related updates/ subscriptions you are going to need in 2021. It could be a mail chimp subscription for better integrated marketing efforts or SMM upgrading apps like Buffer or Owled.
4. Work on the processes from employee onboarding to engagement. Keep the flexible as the new normal as redefined the rules of the game.
5. Seek marketing tech upgrades for better and bigger outreach like how to best align commerce with social.
6. Make a list of Content that worked best for your brand, assess why – and commit to do more such content?
7. Ask your employees – about their year end feedback and new year resolutions (that would help you have a Brand Plan for employer branding)
8. Review the budgets and delegate the spends for the new year accordingly.
9. Covid19 was neither the first pandemic and nor the last one so stay upbeat about your domain, keep an eye on competition and focus on value creation.

Parting lines, I am doing the same. Assessing the digital spend, working on the above list with an additional point, that is ‘Asking the Customers – what do they seek most from us as a branding agency’ so click on the button below and share now! We surely will include that in our new year value add.

 

Branding 2021: The To Do List for Brand Marketers

 

#1 Branding

 

Congratulations!

We have survived 2020 and are set to explore the possibilities in 2021 🙂

2020 was a remarkable year. We did a lot of things that were new like the new normal. Pandemic changed the dynamics of brand marketing.

This year we have set the ball rolling with our brand vision board for 2021. That is what our first Brand Growth idea is all about.

The first video above shares the quick health checks that you must do to ensure your brand growth plan is effective and rewarding.

Watch out the video and answer the checklist questions for your business brand.

 

#2 Personal Branding

 

You already have a personal brand.

Because people see you in a certain way.

They see you as an expert, ambitious, caring, friendly, laid back, lazy, proactive, organized, adventurous, drama queen, or as a style icon.

Good news is that you can change yourself, and also the perceptions about your ‘brand’.

The effort it takes depends on where you stand now and where you want to go.

A word of caution here. Personal Brands, high on marketing and low on content are short-lived. For it to work, there has to be a balance of marketing and relevant content that connects with the audience.

Watch out the video and understand why personal brands matters more now.

 

#3 Sync In Your Brand Personality Framework

 

A brand personality framework sets the foundation for your branding.

2021 has begun with a new normal. The market dynamics have evolved. Brands need to fast evolve themselves. A step further from the brand archetypes and identity prism.

They are very relevant but need a spike as per the evolved market & customer segment. Not to miss here are the competitors who are trying every minute to rule your customers top of mind recall.

How do we do it? By relooking and updating the brand personality frameworks.

Take it all over the places through your story, physical & strategy attributes. Sync it with the brand community, ambassadors and representatives (read people).

Humanize your brand personality and see the engagement rolling.

 

#4 Try One Thing That You Love In Your Favourite Top Brand

 

Branding is all about standing out.

Reaching out to the customer is the biggest challenge for every brand owner.

To do the same, first & foremost challenge is ‘how to increase your brand awareness.

• Apple takes pride in the brand attitude.
• Amul captures the ‘newsjacking’ with prompt.
• Zappos talks about open culture & brings it out with elan.
• Millennials and Gen Z love Netflix for their original content and live streaming experiences.

Each top brand has a uniqueness, a chord they touch & rule that takes them to the top of mind recall.

Find out why your favourite top brand rules your mind. What is it that they do differently?

Try one thing like they do it. See your brand awareness grow.

 

#5 Remarketing an Essential Strategy for Brand Growth

 

Awareness and Brand Building.

Sales Conversions.

Brand Recognition.

Brand Remarketing is the strategy to boost all of the above. It helps you keep your brand in front of your potential customers.

Before we get into the algorithm based powerful remarketing tactics on facebook and google, it is important to understand the concept of remarketing vis-a-vis consumer behavior.

Retargeting and remarketing are two marketing terms which are usually used interchangeably. One is backed by algorithms, the other is a powerful brand building tool.

Both require strategy, consumer insight and brand engagement funnels with absolute touchpoints.

 

#6 Unleash the Power of Brand Messaging 

 

Brand messaging is your superpower.

You should write like a human. That’s the way to establish your brand.

Watch this video to know why?

Now plan your Brand Voice audit.

Sit through and examine how your brand interacts with the consumers.

Check it from the context of competitors. Bring your strategy to life through your voice.

Make your brand messaging precise, useful and actionable.

 

#7 Brand Plan vs Brand Actions

 

Winning 2-3 clients every month even during the pandemic.

Going from 10 posts to 10k views.

Want to know how we did it?

Then watch today’s video that I have shared below.

 

In this video, I share some insights on brand plans that were missing a leap of action and those that got a boost because of proactive actions even during the pandemic.

To achieve the two results that I shared in the beginning, whatever we did was absolutely in line with the annual brand plans. Actions were well thought of and well aligned with annual brand marketing plans. They saved these wonderful brands from procrastination and gave the required push.

To see such results in your business, start executing and see the difference.

 

#8 Millennials, are they a part of your Brand Strategy yet?

 

Millennials are rewriting the rules of marketing. “It’s the 4Ps that matter: Purpose, positioning, personalisation and partnerships,” wrote McCann Worldgroup global chief digital officer, Sean MacDonald.

They are aware, informed and critical at the same time.

They lay emphasis on what they are buying and who they are buying it from. That makes the brand value system significant.

Those in the age groups of late 20s and 30s, 40s engage most with the social media advertisements.

At the same time, they are picky when it comes to engaging with a sponsored content. Thereby suggesting the significance of content marketing and organic engagement.

Millennials are a more digitally equipped and higher conscious pool.

They look at the brand from a 360 degree perspective. The brand culture and experience is a top priority for them.

Check out the top 5 things that you need to embrace now for Millennial Marketing in the video below:

 

#9 How Consistent Brand Engagement is the key for Growth?

 

Any brand engagement or activation is a huge investment. It is an investment of time, energy and money.

We all come across promotional calls from different marketing channels offering,

• A PR Campaign
• An Award nomination.
• An exclusive brand feature.
• An interview on the web/ tv.
• A magazine edition etc.

This is all good. But this can be exceptionally good when your brand communicates consistently. Check out the video below for ideas on consistent brand engagement.

Find out where your target audience engages – offline or online. Work on the consumer insights and watch out for market trends. Know which brand activation is in line with your brand marketing plan. Then have a plan and devote action accordingly.

Make sure you stay in touch with your consumer without letting them feel bombarded. Activate mindfully.

 

#10 Stories are powerful tool for Brand Growth

 

We did a 10 page brand story to celebrate the 10th anniversary of a brand.

The clients of that brand connected by sending messages, gifts and through congratulatory calls.

They celebrated the brand association and this entire exercise gave a boost to client engagement and brand trust-o-meter.

Stories carry value.

Pretty or perfect. Of success or failure. Divine or Destructive, stories make our brains act differently. They are 22 times more memorable than facts.

Listen up in the video below on how we helped brands create beautiful stories through various ideas and channels.

Create stories around work, its people, and it’s clients. Bring out your brand story, its culture.

Stories are forever, they are engaging and have higher recall. Moreover they help you evolve.

 

#11 Brands that Celebrate are high on Engagement and Trust

 

Celebrate events, days, anniversaries.
Use celebrations as the opportunities to create brand engagement.

Engage with employees, clients, and the audience at large. Share a story that people can resonate with. Thematic celebrations evoke feelings and lead to engagement.

Celebrations can offer a real long engagement plan with your audience and also boosts brand awareness.

• Ask for ideas.
• Run contests around great ideas.
• Offer an invite to the winner for celebration.
• Share the process and preparation.
• Go Live During the celebration.
• Share event pictures.
• Show Gratitude with throwbacks and reflect on the memory.

MG Hectors campaign highlighting gender equality at work (Check out their “Women just don’t get cars campaign”) or Prega News talking about the sensitive subject of infidelity (Campaign: She is Complete in Herself), all brands are trying to connect with the audience at large. Such campaigns are not for conversion all the time but for branding boost by talking about a larger cause.

Check out our video on International Women’s Day. We created it around equality for the women who are moving out everyday and taking a role in being the change. We compiled with all the women of the world with all those who have been a part of our journey, the clients, the team members and even the freelance contributors. We are absolutely happy to have these wonderful women in the beautiful chapters of our story.

 

#12 Help Employees Build Their Brand

 

Employees are your true brand ambassadors.

They can be the biggest social proof of your brand and its culture.

Businesses like Drift are designed to empower teams through conversational marketing and sales. They capture the algorithms and behaviours of your website visitors, the email responses and customize the targeted engagement cycle.

Employer Branding is the way to establish a culture, an employer brand and it also boosts revenue.

Explore the why of employer branding for building trust and authenticity.

• When your employees are visible as brand ambassadors, allow them to align their thoughts with your brand.
• Let the employees develop micro-followings and niche audiences as per their association with the brand.
• Activate employee voices – let them be a part of your communication, brand strategy and even brand voice.
• Employees lead to larger collective reach and at times influence more than a brand alone can do.

How you can go about building brand custodians among employees?

• Train Employees on Best Practices
• Create a social media guidelines policy and empower them to use one-to-one and one-to-many conversations
• Allow employees to be the brand advocates, let them share the brand content with a viewpoint
• Coach them on Social Etiquette, it empowers the culture

 

#13 Create Content that leads to Conversion

 

“Content writing is not a problem.

We can share content. My team shall write and give it to you.”

We tell the above to almost everyone who is trying to create brand communication for us. Be it the marketing team, content writers, graphic designers and everyone. As business owners we all feel that way. Yes we can give the most appropriate information and facts about our business but the lag is we are not focusing on conversion here.

Content Marketing needs to be purpose driven. Content needs to have a story for connection and detailing of content helps in optimization. Following is what you need to create content that leads to conversion.

1. Optimize your content
2. Urgency Works. Something like, Offers valid for next 24 hours only or first 10 sign-ups get a 50% discount.
3. Try STP (Segmentation of the content- Targeting- Positioning) in content. Segment your content around offering, benefit and process. Keep the target audience in mind, a trade expo brochure, a brand event invite, an employee activity – all these need to be targeted and positioned accordingly. This boosts relevancy to the consumer.
4. Structure your Content, break it into simple, easy to comprehend paragraphs. Make your offer crystal clear.
5. Influence through content – use testimony, co-brand, partner content.
6. Sell a purpose (in my case it is brand growth) and not a pitch.
7. Always Close. Make it simple for the reader to take action.

 

#14 Leverage Quora Marketing for Brand Influence and Thought Leadership

 

Quora is an American question-and-answer website where questions are asked, answered, followed, and edited by Internet users, either factually or in the form of opinions. Actually ‘Quora’ is an abbreviated form where ‘qu’ stands for question and ‘a’ stands for answer. Thus the full form of Quora is ‘Question or answer ‘.

Quora offers you the opportunity to generate awareness and it also helps you in understanding the audience better. You get to know what questions the consumers are asking.

Puneet Gupta from Astro Talk or Ashish Kashyap from INDMoney are some of the thought leaders you must pay attention to. They have leveraged the paid reach of Quora by best utilising this amazing tool for reputation building and personal branding. Quora is vast and offers a multitude of subjects offering you to establish your brand in your chosen niche.

Following are the reasons why you must include Quora Marketing in your plan to leverage brand image:

• Exceptional Reach, with over 300 million monthly active users
• High Search Visibility
• Content on Quora can always be edited and updated with ease.
• Quora leads to creating Brand Advocates (the followers who engage with your content)

Following is what you need to keep in mind when you start building your Quora profile,

• Make sure your Bio is brilliant
• Catch the algorithm by following relevant topics in notifications
• Choose topics that fit your business
• Find out answers with maximum upvotes
• Take up new questions too
• Show passion for the topic
• Be authentic, use examples to elaborate and share reference links
• Review the analytics regularly and pave the way for Content Boards

It is time to start your Quora Marketing.

 

#15 Write Newsletter that people can’t stop themselves from opening, clicking and sharing

 

Do you think that Email newsletters are a thing of the past?

Also that social media marketing is enough for the digital strategy of your brand?

In terms of return on investment, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) found that email marketing delivers a $51 return for every $1 spent.

It’s numbers like these that makes email marketing so valuable.

But, how are you using email marketing for your business?

And what email initiatives are you focusing on in 2021?

A study by Strongview found that, for most businesses this year the top priority for email marketing is clear:

Increase subscriber engagement.

Increased subscriber engagement means more sales, higher revenue per customer and overall, better profits. Email newsletters are important for building brand loyalty and long-term customers. Remember ‘TheHustle’ an email newsletter which is now a stand alone business and is trusted by more than 1.5M+ readers.

Following are the reasons why you should work on an Email Newsletter:

• An email newsletter is a great way to keep your brand top of mind.
• Unlike social media, your email subscribers are purely yours
• Communication through email leads to undivided attention of your customers.
• There is no fear of content visibility loss due to various algorithms which happens in social media marketing.
• Consistent sharing leads to trust building and builds engagement.
• Trust-o-meter of email subscribers is always high as compared to social media followers.

What points you must keep in mind while planning an email newsletter campaign:

• Make sure you plan your content in advance (the communication should not look rushed).
• Always take permission from your subscribers so that they do not feel bombarded.
• Include an unsubscribe button in every email newsletter.
• Make every newsletter a value-adding content piece rather than a sales pitch.
• Craft engaging content that is well-written and give links to relevant web pages on your website or other brand spaces.

Keep on building your email lists through articles, forums and focus groups. If you are ready to spend some money, hire a firm to create and verify your email lists. Allow them to curate and create content for the newsletter if writing is not your greatest strength.

Be sure that your newsletter is a lot more than a promotional campaign or advertisement.

 

#16 Branding Decisions, Tools and Processes for Growth

 

Rebecca Messina, Senior Advisor McKinsey & Co. recently shared in a marketing summit about how Coca Cola took 75 days to launch Project KANSAS in the 1980s. Project KANSAS was a secret project commissioned by the then senior executives of Coca Cola to create a new flavor for Coke. Rebecca said, if that was to be done today, it would hardly take 75 minutes.

She said so to underline the fact that, present day marketing tools facilitate quick decision making and testing. Imagine we are in a world where we can all go live at a click, without battling over technology, resources and bandwidth.

As a brand strategist I have seen how instant decisions actually lead to engagement, instant gratification and better response. Covid19 has further increased the need to go digital. For making your decisions quick and have an improved ROI, you need:

1. Data analytics in place and available for comparisons
2. Tech enabled response mechanism helps
3. Bring your vectors of growth in the right direction.
4. Work on getting the systems and processes right, this could be ICP or the lead life cycle
5. Create powerful backward integration

Doing the above things will facilitate your decisions by providing the right insights and data.

Be agile when it is about communication and action but stay empathetic with your brand messaging. Work on capturing the analytics, automating to act faster and use technology & tools to foster faster growth.

 

#17 Be a Brand that Facilitates Accountability and Growth 🙂

 

I have been firefighting at the home front while taking care of 2 members who tested Covid19 positive last week. There is a little break from work as my priority is to help my family bounce back with good health.

Considering there is no house help and home needs me more, I fixed up 2 calls a day with my team. I try to check emails at least once a day. I observed two things in these 4 days and that is why this video became even more important. Plus I wanted to do it for my belief, “Showing up is half the battle”.

During our weekly and monthly tasks review, we found a lag. For one of the accounts 10 things were pending on the client side. Of course no business owner wants this but most of us experience such situations. The same moment I reflected that 90% of the account management is on without my presence. Grateful that my team is up there, safe and in action mode.

FACILITATION IS THE KEY. We are experiencing the power of facilitation everyday. Be it our clients with a marketing budget of 15 lacs or 1 Cr per annum, facilitation works.

It reflects on revenue, performance and culture. It is the required power and push that your business needs most.

Globally the businesses have outlived 2020 and are still struggling with the second phase of pandemic. Brands are undergoing an evolution. There is an emergence of D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) brands. Digital disintermediation is leading to C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer) models by matching markets and facilitating transactions.

All this requires, learning, adopting and action. Use the following strategies to equip yourself for branding 2021:

1. Process Design: Process design streamlines you set to action and simplifies the review mechanism. The processes that you must work on includes:

• Ideal Customer Profile: For building a tribe and to win the people you would like to work.
• Lead Process Flow: To simplify the process for your marketing and sales teams.
• Onboarding Process: Helps in structuring the tasks, deliverables and accountability.

2. Stop Micromanaging: Trust the people around you, plan and delegate. Facilitating things to your team speeds up the process. This is significant because digital marketing should be as per schedule. For entrepreneurs, it saves you from all the overwork 🙂

3. Appreciate more: That allows you to receive more than the expectations. Also appreciation begets appreciation.

4. Culture: Facilitating brands are high on accountability and response. Thereby low attrition and high sense of belonging.

The evolution of new age models have changed the parameters of brand marketing. Customers are happy to go digital and teams are trying to drive performance in the new normal. There is a high chance that you lag action because of the gaps in facilitation.

 

#18 Unleash the Power of SOLD OUT Emails 

 

It’s one thing to have the skills, knowledge, and expertise that others are willing to pay for. (The good news is, you already have this!)

However, it’s a whole other thing to actually get paid for them.

The first one among the 52 battle tested brand growth ideas that I had shared last year was about Sending Emails.

We discussed how sending emails help you stay in touch with your clients, active and dormant and how it is a great way to stay connected as a brand.

This one is about writing powerful Sales Emails. You can build email lists, add subscribers, buy or procure databases. But how to use that list EFFECTIVELY is what we are going to understand in the video below.

Here is the checklist to follow:

1. Work on the message. Make sure your email talks about the benefit (read revenue) for the audience rather than establishing your credentials.
2. Capture what’s going on at the moment and what is going to happen in the industry.
3. Use your emails to unlock the authentic branding confidence.
4. Simplify what makes them able to invest and include what will make them willing to invest?
5. Underline why should they BUY from you?
6. Emphasize ‘Why Now”?

Still wondering how to grow your brand? Why don’t you contact us and we can put together a proven Strategy to grow your brand to next level.