How to Explain Your Brand

Many businesses get stalled because customers just don’t understand everything they have to offer. If that’s happening to your business, perhaps you have an explanation problem. This is the episode that will offer you a brand communication solution.

How to better explain your business

Guest: Lee Lefever, Co-founder of Common Craft and author of The Art of Explanation
Host: Jay Ehret, Dean of Marketing Know-How at The Marketing Spot.com


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Get complete show notes and links on The Marketing Spot Blog:
How To Explain Your Brand
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What Great Brands Do

In a company built around a brand, it’s up to the business owner or CEO to understand the difference between the the business and the brand. There is none. That’s the big idea that underpins Denise Lee Yohn’s new book: What Great Brands Do.

What Great Brands Do Author Denise Lee Yohn

Branding is not a marketing function. It is a business function. According to Yohn, brand building cannot be delegated to the marketing department. Instead your brand must be “operationalized,” meaning, you use your brand as a guide and compass for all activities of your core business operations.

In this episode of Power to the Small Business, What Great Brands Do author Denise Lee Yohn discusses her new book and her seven brand-building principles. It is a book that will help you get a grip on how your brand and your business are connected. And Yohn asserts that if you make your brand your business, you can have both: a great brand and a great business. Press the play button on the player below and get started.


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Show Notes – What Great Brands Do

Brand: The central organizing idea of your business.

  • A brand is a bundle of values and attributes that define the value you deliver to people through doing business, that forms the basis of your company’s relationships with all your stakeholders.
  • Your brand is what your company does and how you do it.
  • Your brand is not what you say you are, it’s what you do.

Selected Podcast Quotes from Denise Lee Yohn

“Marketing and advertising only play a very small role in shaping brand perception.”

“Great brands don’t delineate between their brands and their businesses. They’re one and they same.”

“It takes an enlightened leader or team of people to realize that there is a lack of alignment between what they’re saying and what they’re doing and at the same time, have the aspiration to have a great brand.”

~ Denise Lee Yohn on Power to the Small Business

What Great Brands Do Show Links:

The Book: What Great Brands Do
The Tools: Branding Worksheets and Templates
On Twitter: Denise Lee Yohn
Denise on the Podcast: Marketers Roundtable Discussion of Current Issues

If you liked this podcast, you might also be interested in these episodes:

The Keys to Transformational Branding
Branding Lessons from the U.S. Marines
Small Business Branding Clinic

Inspiring Word of Mouth With The Passion Conversation

Passion can go one way, but a conversation must go both ways. When it comes to word of mouth, If you want your customers to be passionate about you, then you have to reciprocate initiate. John Moore and Geno Smith take it up a notch in their new book: The Passion Conversation (co-authored with Robbin Phillips and Greg Cordell), saying that if you want passionate buzz about your business, you first have to love your customers.

right click to see Passion Conversation book by Brains on Fire

How far are you willing to go for your customers? And do you really care about them outside of their purchase from you? The more you care, the more love you show, the more passionate word of mouth your customers are willing to give in return. But where to start?

In this episode of Power to the Small Business, John Moore and Geno Church of Brains on Fire take a passionate dive into the business/customer relationship. They answer the tough questions and give practical examples of how it’s done.


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Selected Quotes from the Show

“A brand isn’t worthy of receiving love before they start showing love.”
~ John Moore

“If we have a better understanding of why people share and talk about what we do,  instead of (the conversation) being artificial, it’s authentic.”
~ Geno Church

“If a brand is to really make a connection and to spark word of mouth, they must speak to the customer like a friend.”
~ John Moore

“Doing business right, and purposeful, is going to be profitable.”
~ Geno Church

Show Resources

Buy the Book: The Passion Conversation
Brains On Fire
John Moore
Geno Church
Bolo Digital Marketing Conference

Counterintuitive Marketing – When Not to Trust Your Gut

Thanks to neuromarketing, we can discard some of our most cherished beliefs. And thanks to Roger Dooley we can get a handle on marketing that doesn’t seem to make sense.

Roger Dooley author  of Brainfluence podcast

You don’t get customers. You just can’t. But don’t worry, customers don’t get customers either. That’s why we have things like behavioral economics and neuromarketing. If you’ve been flying by the seat of your intuition, perhaps it’s time for a marketing gut check. Roger Dooley has categorized and compiled 100 marketing tips based on how customers behave, not how you think they might behave. And some of revelations in Brainfluence will hit you right in your gut.

In this episode of Power to the Small Business, Roger Dooley, author of Brainfluence, will discuss some of the most counterintuitive advice from his book. It just may change the way you market, and cause you to question why you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing.

Guest: Roger Dooley, neuromarketing consultant and author of Brainfluence
Host: Jay Ehret, Dean of Marketing Know-How at TheMarketingSpot.com


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Selected Roger Dooley Quotes from the Show

“Introducing a product you don’t expect to sell can actually increase sales of other products in the line.”

Give somebody a lot of choices, and they start doing comparisons and end up just getting all muddled and just giving up.”

“We don’t like to think hard, and when we can make a decision based on emotion, it’s easier for us. And often, we’re even happier with the result when we do things that way.”

~ Roger Dooley

Show Resources

Roger Dooley’s Neuroscience Marketing Blog
Roger Dooley’s Forbes Blog

Free marketing coaching session with Jay Ehret

Belief in Your Business

How do I become a successful business? Show me the steps! Maybe it’s not the steps you really need. Maybe what’s missing is belief: yours and your customers’.

right click to see The Business of Belief by Tom Asacker

Businesses continue to sell their brand using the attention strategy: trying to capture people’s attention in a crowded marketplace. A strategy that mostly fails. You know it’s time for a new strategy, but do you believe? In his short, powerful book, The Business of Belief, Tom Asacker explores the motivation behind how you run a business, and why customers would want to buy from you.

In this episode of Power to the Small Business, we snag Asacker for a discussion on desires, beliefs and how to approach business decisions with your true passion.

Guest: Tom Asacker – Entrepreneur, Consultant, Author
Host: Jay Ehret – Dean of Marketing Know-How, TheMarketingSpot.com
Length: 26 minutes


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Selected Tom Asacker Quotes from the Show

“Belief is what drives people’s actions, not their understanding.”

“We are somehow drawn by this notion that people are rational actors. Like computers; we’re thinking machines. But that Idea could not be further from the truth.”

“I think every CEO, every business owner, should employ a court jester, someone who can just tell him the truth, because the people in the kingdom aren’t going to tell him.”

“There’s a big difference between what people say they want, what they rationalize to themselves and other people, and what they really want. That’s the business’s job to figure that out and then create and deliver that unexpressed desire.”

~ Tom Asacker

Show Resources

Tom Asacker’s Website: The Business of Belief
Purchase the Book: The Business of Belief

Free Fundamentals of Branding Recorded Webinar: Branding 101
Free Fundamentals of Marketing Recorded Webinar: Marketing 101

Tapping Brand Advocates for Word of Mouth Marketing

Brand Advocates - Word of Mouth Marketing - Social Media Marketing

You may be surprised at how many of your customers are really your brand advocates, ready and willing to spread the word about your business. You just need to give them a nudge in the right direction. In this episode of Power to the Small Business, Rob Fugetta, Founder and CEO of Zuberance, and author of Brand Advocates, joins host Jay Ehret to discuss how to turn your brand advocates into brand promoters.

Guest: Rob Fugetta – Zuberance.
Host: Jay Ehret – The Marketing Spot
Length: 24 minutes

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Rob Fugetta on Brand Advocates:

Definition of Brand Advocates – Highly satisfied customers, or others, who are willing to recommend your brand or product without pay or incentives.

Start by asking the ultimate question for customer loyalty:
“On a scale from 1-10, how likely are you to recommend us to your friends or colleagues?”

Steps to Tapping Brand Advocates for Word of Mouth

1. Identify – Ask the ultimate question across a variety of customer touch points and communications channels.

2. Energize – Making it easy for your advocates to recommend them.

  • Create ratings and reviews for your products.
  • Collect advocate stories and testimonials.
  • Get advocates to share content and offers with their social network.

3. Track your results.

Selected Quotes from Rob Fugetta:

“True advocacy cannot be paid for or manufactured, it can only be earned.”

“It’s really not about marketing to your advocates; it’s marketing through your advocates, and with your advocates.”

“Marketing is about more than clicks and impressions; it’s about building a movement around your brand.”

SHOW LINKS:

Buy the book: Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers Into a Powerful Marketing Force
Rob Fugetta at Zuberance
Rob Fugetta on Twitter


What’s Going on With Business Books?

Topic: The Current and Future State of Business Books

The Future of Business Books Cover of Todd Sattersten book

Podcast Episode #83 of the internet show about small business marketing


In business, you are what you read. But what you read and where you read it is changing. In this episode of Power to the Small Business, business book expert Todd Sattersten will guides us through those change. Sattersten should know, he co-wrote The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, and he coaches business book authors. It’s time to find out what’s going on with business books.

Guest: Todd Sattersten – Biz Book Lab
Host: Jay Ehret – Dean of Marketing Know-How at TheMarketingSpot.com
Length:
27 minutes

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— Todd Sattersten on Business Books  —

I. Business books are generally lagging the (e-book) trend vs. fiction.

“Until the technology (book-marking, highlighting, commenting) catches up, I think you’re still going to see business books bought primarily in the print form.”

II. Business books are getting shorter.

“Business books are getting shorter. They are more about a single idea vs. a plethora of ideas.”

III. The retail store is not dead….for the best sellers.

“It is impossible to be a best-selling author without having that book in the retail environment…. 80% of (the big name best-sellers) sales happen in the retail setting.”

IV. The definition of a book will change.

“When you look at how different we experience books in the electronic space, that we’re almost going to have to find a way to call them something different, because I think we are going to interact with them differently.”

Todd Sattersten on choosing a good business book to read:

  1. Ask your friends. These people know who you are and know your preferences.
  2. Scan the table of contents of a book. The language they use will tell you if it’s a good book for you.
  3. Read the index of a book. Look for terms that match up with the problem you are dealing with.
  4. Read the introduction of a book. You will learn what is the promise of the book.

Todd’s top book recommendations for entrepreneurs:

The Partnership Charter by David Gage

The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

SHOW LINKS

Todd Sattersten’s Company: Biz Book Lab
Todd’s Article: How to Read A Business Book
The Marketing Edge Webinar Series

The Cult of Customer Amazement

The Internet Show About Small Business Marketing

Shep Hyken Customer Experience

Podcast Episode #65: Amazing Customer Experiences with Shep Hyken


It’s easy to say “I want my customers to be loyal.” It’s tougher to actually achieve that goal. To earn your customers’ loyalty you have to earn their confidence. Without confidence, you cannot have loyalty. Confidence is a product of consistently delivering a better-than-average experience every time you interact with the customer. It’s not about being perfect, perfection is a goal that’s not reality. However, you can realistically amaze your customers by delivering an above-average experience.

In this episode of Power to the Small Business, customer service expert Shep Hyken joins host Jay Ehret to talk customer loyalty and amazement. Hyken believes that customer expectations are so low right now, that it doesn’t take much to exceed them. He believes you can build a cult of customer amazement.

Guest: Shep Hyken – Customer Service Speaker, St. Louis
Length: 28 minutes

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You can also download the mp3 file here: Download Power to the Small Business #65 (for personal use only)


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SHOW NOTES

The Five Phases of the Customer

  1. The Cult of Uncertainty – The first time a customer does business with you, they’re not 100% sure what they’re going to get.
  2. The Cult of Alignment –Customers understand what you promise, what you deliver.
  3. The Cult of Experience – Customers experience what you promise.
  4. The Cult of Ownership – When it is experienced more than once, it become predictable and owned.
  5. The Cult of Amazement – If the predictable, owned experience is better than average.


Moment of misery:
That bad moment in the customer’s experience.

Moment of mediocrity: A moment in the customer’s experience that is average.

Moment of magic: That moment in the customer’s experience that is above average. The moment of magic is all about managing customer interactions for a positive experience, an above average experience.

SELECTED QUOTES FROM SHEP HYKEN

“The goal is, ‘what am I doing right now to make sure that customer’s going to want to come back the next time.’ And you focus on that thought, every time.”

“People think amazement has to be: ‘Blow me away. Wow! Fantastic! ’ …But the great companies…really are nothing more than better than average, all of the time.”

“In a small business, what they (the customer) has is access: access to the owner, access to the top employees. …I think access is a pretty cool thing.”

“The customer is not always right, but they are always the customer. You have to figure out a way to let them be wrong with dignity.”

SHOW LINKS

Shep Hyken’s Website: www.Hyken.com
Shep Hyken’s Book: The Cult of the Customer
Book referenced in show: Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon