Branding Marketing with Linda Pophal part 2

Continuation from yesterday’s interview with Linda Pophal about branding marketing your business. Read as she shares about brand marketing and how to apply it to your business.

Question 5: What does it mean for a business owner to look at their business, services and products “from the outside in”?

Another great question! As business owners we are intimately familiar with our business and its products or services and there is a strong tendency to believe that the world sees us the way we do. They generally don’t! Looking at your business, services and products “from the outside in,” means taking steps to gain external perspectives that can be truly eye-opening. I’ve had experiences with clients who will say things like: “we just can’t get people to understand our value proposition.” Well, the problem with that is, that the value proposition isn’t *yours*, it’s *theirs*. You need to understand what the market wants and how your product/service does or does not meet those needs and then you need to make decisions on what you may need to change. It’s not easy to do. We all view our world from our frame of reference – which can often be far too limited.

Question 6: Should a business owner use social media? (somewhat of a “trick” question – the answer, of course, is “it depends”).

Ha! Yes, exactly right. It does depend. My recommendation would be for any business person to first start with the answers to those two questions we discussed earlier and then to consider *all* of the available tools and techniques available to communicate with their specifically defined target audience and, among these, select those that are likely to provide the “biggest bang for the buck.” It’s a matter of prioritizing, but also of creating the right “mix” of communication tactics so that your message is getting out there multiple times in multiple ways. Those ways, of course, need to be focused on your target audience/objectives and not just on using “new tools.”

Question 7: How can a business owner generated media interest in their business, products or services?

Generating media interest can be a great way to increase awareness of your product or service and tends to be more “credible” than the things you say about yourself. The process is really the same as when trying to attract interest from consumers in your product or service. First, you need to identify the media outlets that you believe will most effectively reach the audience you wish to influence. Then you need to develop an understanding of those media outlets and their needs, so that you can appropriately “pitch” your story/information to them. Again, it’s looking “from the outside in” – it’s not what you want to tell them about your product/service. It’s how what you want to tell them will be interesting/compelling enough that they will choose to share it with *their* audience. That means focusing on “newsworthy” messages, not self-promotion.

Question 8: One last question. What’s the best way for a business owner to manage their media development efforts?

I would say that the best way to manage these efforts is to consider them in alignment with all of their promotional activities. Media development, advertising, community outreach, etc., are all part of the “promotion” piece of marketing. It’s a matter, again, of identifying your target audience and your objectives and then selecting among all of the available options to influence them to pick those that make the most sense from an effectiveness/efficiency standpoint. We all have to deal with limited resources – time/money. The challenge is to leverage those resources most effectively. To me that means developing a plan – however simple – to ensure that you’re making choices that are strategic and not just “reactive.”