Today, the idea of promoting one’s business and its products has evolved into a dizzying number of different branches to reach more people through more outlets.

Types of marketing you need to learn

Let’s take a look at the branches of marketing that are absolutely necessary for any business to comprehend and potentially incorporate into their marketing strategies in this high-speed age of information.

Brand marketing

Brand marketing concerns itself with building a specific public image to promote a product and/or service. This image is built on the desires of a business’ target audience, making it something these potential customers can relate to, and then engaging with them on avenues they are most likely to welcome the promotion.

B2B marketing

When it comes to marketing from one business to another, the demands are more complex than simply appealing to these potential clients' interests (unlike that of B2C marketing). Businesses have bigger needs to address that require plenty of educating from the marketers to guarantee that their solution is the best option for the prospects.

There are also different buyer roles from the prospects that need to be taken into account when creating the message, so that it suits their varying perspectives. Other important considerations are the interactions with clients’ sales teams and the inherent length of buying cycles that affect how a B2B company analyzes the effectiveness of its marketing campaigns.

Referral marketing

Referral marketing sets its eyes on creating a marketing team out of a business’ loyal customer base, using their devotion to its products and/or services as an endorsement for the business itself. The process focuses on nurturing the relationship with customers to make them trust the business enough to publicly vouch for the quality of its offerings.

Referral marketing is effective, because it leverages the trust people have with their family and friends. They will more likely believe in whatever their loved ones are saying about the value of a certain product instead of what a company is touting.

Mobile marketing

Mobile marketing is reaching out to an audience through the entire spectrum of mobile devices, ranging from basic cellphones to smartphones to tablets. The methods employed for this type of marketing used to fall mainly into the push type of technique with “cold call” text messages. With  the advent of mobile Internet connections, cold call emails and multimedia messages are also added.

Now that most mobile devices enjoy mostly the same online experience of desktop computers, similar online marketing methods in that platform have also begun to be used in mobile marketing.

Digital marketing

Digital marketing is essentially the catch-all term that encompasses all types of marketing done through the use of the Internet. It covers everything from “push” marketing techniques (e.g. email and instant messaging) to “pull” marketing techniques (e.g. pay-per-click advertisements and content marketing).

As the Internet continues to become an integral part of people’s lives, digital marketing is quickly turning into a crucial avenue for every business looking to thrive today and tomorrow.

Methods of Digital Marketing

Considering how big digital marketing is as an umbrella term, it is worth discussing the many methods that fall underneath that major category, in order to get a clearer picture of what businesses can do to reach out to their audience using this technology.

Search engine marketing

SEM focuses on promoting a website and its products and/or services through search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing to gain traffic. The methods of gaining traffic can be divided in two: 1) through “organic” and free traffic via search engine optimization (SEO); and 2) through paid advertisements.

SEO deals with optimizing both the internal and external aspects of a website to increase its ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), while buying ads simply makes the website’s link more visible on the SERPs.

Keyword marketing

Directly underneath SEM is keyword marketing, as it is closely tied with gaining traffic through search engines. Keyword marketing basically concentrates on using keywords that are highly relevant to the business on its website to improve its ranking on SERPs.

Keywords are the words people type into search engines to find what they’re looking for. By developing a good keyword marketing strategy, a business will be able to promote its products and/or services effectively through providing exactly what its target audience is searching.

Inbound marketing

As opposed to more traditional “outbound” marketing, such as advertisements and sending emails to get people’s attention, inbound marketing relies on creating and sharing valuable content to lure a target audience into becoming loyal customers.

It is a general strategy that involves understanding the prospects, and giving them what they want through personalized content delivered by way of various channels, such as blogs and social media. The process is then taken a step further by nurturing these customers through a consistent and constantly evolving marketing cycle.

Social media marketing

This particular type of marketing is all about harnessing the power of social media to promote a product and/or service. Social media includes everything from comprehensive platforms (e.g. Facebook and Google+) to dedicated channels (e.g. Twitter and Instagram).

There are billions of people who use social media, and its main goal of connecting people who share interests nigh-instantaneously make it an invaluable tool in any online marketing campaign.

Content marketing

Content marketing shares much of the same defining principles of inbound marketing. Many experts have different opinions on what Content Marketing really is, but basically, it revolves around the tried and true philosophy that the best way to attract high quality leads and turn them into a devoted customer base is to create compelling content that caters to their interests.

The difference lies in how inbound marketing is more of the overall approach, as it takes into account what needs to be done after generating leads.

Great content can be in the form of articles, infographics, podcasts, or videos. Also, content marketing can have huge impacts if done with social media integration. If you are curious as to how this is done, check this article by SaleHoo.com on Facebook content strategy, and make it your peg for future content x social strategies in the future.

Article marketing

As the name suggests, article marketing is about writing articles to be posted on different websites in order to drive traffic towards the page of the product and/or service being promoted.

However, article marketing is usually associated with the unethical method of simply spinning already published ideas, then sending them to a lot of low quality article directories to gain lots of links.

Guest blogging on respected websites, however, is a fair way of doing article marketing, as it means creating quality content and gaining quality links.

Video marketing

As another subcategory of content marketing, video marketing uses videos hand-in-hand with other relevant marketing materials to promote a business and/or its offerings. These videos can range from slick productions, such as full-fledged commercials and fluidly animated kinetic typographies to simple shoots like sit-down interviews and customer testimonials.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of referral marketing, promoting a business’ products and/or services via the efforts of a third party or an “affiliate”. Affiliates can do their promotion through whatever means they can, and the distinguishing characteristic of this kind of referral marketing is that the affiliates make money off of the commission from every sale they generate.

The key advantage is that businesses that make use of this method get their marketing done by people who are driven to do it. They also get promotion from all sorts of different avenues, thereby widening their reach.

As many marketing approaches as we’ve tackled here in this article, this is by no means a comprehensive list. If you believe there are other marketing techniques relevant to the modern business paradigm worth mentioning, please do so in the comments.

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The post Types Of Marketing You NEED To Understand To Survive The Digital Age appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.

Branding is not an easy task. Sure, a right marketing strategy coupled with tweaks around social presence might do the trick, but your employees are a part of what makes your brand whole.

It’s not uncommon to see a displeased worker saying “The Company I’m working for is driving me nuts! I’m so overworked and underpaid!” on social networks (just lurk around Twitter and you’ll see what I mean). This may lead to:

• Your employees bad-mouthing your company (“word of mouth” is a really strong marketing/anti-marketing strategy), a major let down when you are handling a start-up business and is on the hiring process.
• Employees themselves are pulling down your brand online.
• Major decrease in productivity, resulting in less profit on where you should have racked tons of cash by now.
• A mass “exodus” or uproar against your company, which may or (may not, but is still a bad thing) catch the attention of the media. Take union strikes for example.

Those are just some problems you might encounter when you are degenerate in making your employees happy. It’s just simple math, unhappy workers = fail business = fail brand. So how will you prevent these from happening?

Related: 12 Ways To Improve Productivity At The Workplace

# 1. Know your employees’ worth

This applies especially when you are trying to build your core members on your business. Do not offer a low salary for people that are doing a lot. In the long run, a Rook is worth more than 5 Pawns. A PDF article by Sierrahealth.org discusses this further, and you can find it here. Know who to keep, and keep them happy because chances are, that he or she might close the deal on that contract you’ve been dying to get your hands on.

# 2. Provide material incentives (yes, even the small ones count)

An employee will be happy even with the tiniest material gesture such as a coffee mug or a shirt. These items will put that inception to your employee’s brains that will go like “Hey, if boss can provide this now, maybe I’ll get more when I do more.” No, it isn’t bribing, but hey it works right?

There are tons of places online where you can get bulk discounts when buying these things. Check out eBay or Amazon for cool stuff fit as your company giveaways. Or if you want something where you can put your brand on, check out Promopeddler.com for their extensive lists of products. Chances are, that branded USB rubber bracelet will be on your employee’s Instagram portfolio just for its sheer, wicked looks. Free photo branding, eh?

Related: 6 Ways Companies Can Motivate Smarter

# 3. Provide critical feedback on matters that counts

Employees like getting criticized, even if they don’t admit it. They want their work to be reviewed, so that if mistakes are present, they can change it and continually make them better. Constructive criticisms are an awesome way to connect with your employees, showing them that you care if they screw up or did something good.

But don’t just blare on them like a fog horn, talk to them in the most humane manner as possible, since they are people, not your toaster that didn’t work this morning. Don’t just say, “It’s ok.” Or “Meh, that will do.” To them, it’s very vague and they won’t know if they are screwing up or not. Which brings us to…

# 4. Don’t let your top performers clean-up on poor ones

Again, there are no “poor performers”, just workers who misunderstand what their job is supposed to be. Talk to the misunderstood ones, and don’t let your top guns anywhere near the clean-up crew.  Even if they say that they’ll do the job since they can handle it, notify them that it’s not part of their job description and it’s better to assist the ones that screwed up, rather than do the work for them.

Your brand will not benefit from this (especially if you are running a service type of business), since customers will think that you are hiring untrustworthy people to take care of stuff and just letting the good ones compensate in the future.

Related: 5 Ways To Develop Productive Work Environments

# 5. Know and discuss what the future holds for your employee.

This might be one of the most important things you need to get your brand a boost in quite an unorthodox way.  Do employee performances recap every now and then, and see if some of them are worthy to push up to the top. Get to your social networks and let the world know that you promoted someone. It shows that your brand is happy that someone good is getting promoted, and makes your other employees think that if they want to get the same treatment, they should do more.

Sure, some really good workers might not be satisfied if you raised them but they feel that they are worth more (and you can’t provide what they are looking for), which may lead to them leaving. Don’t hang on to them though, if they really want to leave.

Here’s the branding part. That soon-to-be-former employee might talk to one future business in which his current company might not be able to provide a service to. Chances are, your company can get outsourced or referred to, if you had treated that employee right and he or she knows that you provide good services. Brand referral, offline “word of mouth” style.

There are tons of suggestions that you can do to empower your business brand via your employees. You don’t need to do team building sessions always, or give out ravishing trip to a certain country or a plasma TV to make them happy. Just maintain a steady communication and let them know that you are happy to be having them in your company. It works wonders, seriously.

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The post 5 Ways To Greatly Amplify Your Brand Using Your Employees’ Morale appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.

Top Global Brands

In October 2011, Interbrand, the most prominent brand consultancy in the business sphere, launched its top 100 global brands. Among the top 5 were Coca-Cola, which has topped the list many times in a row; IBM; Microsoft; Google and General Electric (GE).

These five have been reigning in the list for years now, serving the public with quality products from beverages to computer software, electronics and other services. But how? Stop wondering anymore because it’s all about branding or how they have established their name to the consumer public.

What is branding?

You may have asked yourself what it is and what it does. Is it different from advertising and public relations (PR), or is it basically part of them?

Before you do PR and advertising, you first have to conceptualize and establish your brand.

• Branding is the first stage that a company must undergo to establish its name and build its reputation.
• It is a way to fulfill a company’s long-term goal of being known widely in the market.
• It is your brand that you introduce, reinforce and use in your other marketing campaigns, serving as the product or service’s identity.

In the American Marketing Association dictionary, branding is a strategy “to develop a strong brand reputation” that can result in positive recognition and feedbacks.

In order to be successful in branding, it is obviously important to have a brand or a trademark, in legal terms, that will stand out among the competitors and that will make a mark in the minds of your consumers.

Related: Can A Brand Belief Help You To Be More Successful In Today’s Tough Environment?

More than just the brand name and logo

Branding is not only about establishing a unique yet intellectually-thought brand name, designing a memorable logo, creating the most fancy yet remarkable slogan and advertisement, and organizing events to increase recognition; it is also about how a company carries itself in a pool of competing industries.

Branding: Face and Reputation

Also for branding purposes, it is important that your company’s credibility is not marred by unhealthy issues that can turn consumers off. In this way, you will be able to build your reputation and open more opportunities for your company.

• Having good and flawless reputation can open more connections not only to fellow businessmen in the industry but also to your consumers.
• Connection and communication between you and your consumer is very important, and a well-crafted branding strategy can help you win their hearts.

For example, Coca-Cola has been there for hundreds of years and is still being trusted by consumers. The reason behind it is the way the company reaches out to its target market—a healthy company-consumer relationship.

Related: Brands Are Created By Visionaries, Destroyed By Caretakers. What Are You?

Reaching out to consumers: Building the bridge

Branding is important in establishing a connection between consumers and the business or company. As you establish your name or trademark, it is necessary to not only know the products or services you offer, but also your target market. In this way, you will know how to reach out to them to motivate consumer loyalty.

Getting consumer loyalty in a very competitive industry is no walk in the park, but it is achievable even through simple means. For one, you can start by being open to your consumers for their questions, complaints, feedback and other concerns.

• Consumer feedback is important since you will know how consumers view your product and how to improve it based on such information.
• It can also help establish your brand among competitors and introduce your product to consumers who are unfamiliar with your brand.

 Taking the edge against competitors

Rising above your competitors banks largely on two things: credibility and consumer loyalty. These essentials are linked, as branding will not be successful if one of these goals were not achieved. Credibility breeds consumer loyalty, and consumer loyalty is hugely anchored on credibility.

 Personal Branding

Even individuals can take advantage of the benefits of branding, establishing a reputation for themselves and being able to sell themselves better.

• For job hunters, presenting themselves with a particular “brand” or identity allows them to make a mark in prospective employers’ minds, making them more memorable and more likely to get hired compared with other applicants.
• Even in the corporate setting, branding is deemed important not only for the company, but also to its employees. If branding per se can make a company stand out from others, personal branding can also make one shine among other office personalities.

When you brand yourself and your work well, you will gain expert status in which people will come to you for expert advice and opinions. These will make you a household name or an authority figure for journalists and for the industry.

Personal branding is also an edge for you because you will be trusted not only by your employer or by other business people, but also by the consumers. Consumers will put their trust in you because they think that you know much better. This way, you can gain more confidence that you can do more to provide quality service for other people. And as a personal brand, it is also important to take care and increase your market value because yes, business is still business.

Related: Boost Your Personal Profile To Grow Your SME Business

The post What’s In A Name? The Huge Value Of Branding appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.

There are actual instances wherein the feeling of fear invokes a more powerful and more positive mental response. For instance, the fear of the unknown may push a person to do exhaustive research on the subject to obtain the ins and outs of it.

Better results

Business-minded people, specifically investors, usually do this technique. Their end goal is to ensure that they will get much better results compared to a person who just blindly invests without even knowing anything.

Not everybody can be successful through investing, though. It requires months of study, enough skills and knowledge, and even a considerable amount of funding to be successful in the field. There are several traits a good investor should have that help him/her in achieving success in the industry. But one important factor that should not be ignored is risk management.

Related: Do What Scares You (AKA Managing Change)

Risk management process

Generally speaking, risk management is the process of identifying risks and taking proper action to minimize or prevent damage. Its goal is to protect the business from being vulnerable. While it is not as simple as writing or cashing checks, risk management has become part of the never-ending process of entrepreneurship while also having its own system.

There are five main stages of risk management. They are:

1. Identifying the threats – Prevention is always better than cure. Knowing the threats before they happen is always better than acting on them as they happen. This is the main objective of risk management: preparation.
2. Assessing the impact – After the threats are identified, certain calculations are done to gauge how heavy the effect will be should the threats materialize. It is crucial to determine how much damage a potential danger can do to the business so the right measures should be taken to prevent it.
3. Predicting the effects – Next, business owners must determine what would happen next if the damage is done. This phase focuses more on the “worst-case scenario” so as to prepare for everything and not just the immediate obstacles.
4. Reducing/eliminating the risks – This stage of risk management deals on figuring out a way to reduce (if not eliminate) the risks and, consequently, the threat itself. This is one of the most important stages of risk management: risk managers must be able to create a solution to the problem itself.
5. Prioritizing the risks according to importance – This part dwells on the different threats and risks identified throughout the whole processes and arrange them according to how grave the effects can be and then deal with them one by one. Most of the time the heaviest threats are dealt with first, given the fact that they are the most important and may cause the biggest damage.

Related: Fear Of Embarrassment Or Mistakes, Are Not Business Reasons To Postpone An Online Marketing Strategy

There are three distinct factors an investor can get from risk management. These three are:

1. Secure investing –Doing some homework on the prospected investments would not hurt. Learn everything from what the investment would be to the people and companies that will be involved in it. Making sure the investment is safe and secure is, of course, always a good plan.
2. Minimizing losses – If the investment is not profitable, or there are absolute facts that point to damages (or even losses), risk management will be very handy. Applying the five-step process mentioned above would ensure that, even before there is a risk of losing the investment, certain actions are already set into motion to prevent these types of disasters from happening.
3. Bridging the gap between investing and gambling – Investing and gambling are two different things but, if seen in another perspective, has a lot of similarities. Generally, the main sense of both is that investing is good while gambling is bad. Investing is a risk-averse, continuous type of business that deals with saving for specific goals like an ownership of something tangible. On the other hand, gambling is a risky type of entertainment where the odds are almost always against the gambler. It can also be addictive and destructive and is usually based on luck and emotions. However, both deal with analytical thinking and crucial split-second decision making that, in the end, might reap a good enough reward. Both are not absolute, the element of chance is always present. And both deal with (in a certain extent) risk management. A professional gambler would always take into account the odds depending how much he can win against the risks he will be taking. At the same time an investor would consider the odds depending on how much the investment would grow against the possible risks he might be taking as well. Of course, knowing where the line is between the good (to invest) and the bad (to gamble) is important.

“It is generally agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive. And perhaps the same is true of stock exchanges” – John Maynard Keyes

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The post When Fear Is Good: Risk Management Techniques appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.