Integrated Marketing Is Specific–It’s not the Same as Branding

Integrated marketing is a great phrase. Branding expert Ken Bator’s goes way beyond integrated marketing to focus upon customer experience. Ken shares the keys to branding for success. When it comes to Ken’s branding for success, I’m tempted to turn to clichés such as ”He’s the cat’s meow.” But that would be so unfair, since Ken is so much more, seriously, the cream of the crop…ok. Enough with the clichés.

Marketing, whether you call it integrated marketing or just marketing is not the same as branding. Branding and marketing are not synonyms. Marketing is a specific function. Branding is much bigger than that, especially when it comes to branding for success and where customer experience becomes key

Ken’s B + C + S formula is BRAND + CULTURE + STRATEGY. Ken’s formula is not just another three words he came up with to capture our attention. Ken has distilled his years of creating customer experience on the front lines, solving issues for services brands. After seeing the failures and implementing branding for success, Ken came to a realization…these three words are the exact three areas business owners should focus upon when branding for success.

Branding for Success Includes Customer Experience

Ken has more than 20 years of experience in focusing upon customer experience as part of branding for success, particularly for service brands. Ken helps brands reach new levels of effectiveness by helping them learn his B + C + S formula, Ken has hosted and produced four different shows, including the Cool Culture Corner, Branding The Experience, The CU Business News podcast, and Beyond The Call.

Key Takeaways

• If you drive people to a customer experience of your brand that doesn’t match with brand integrated marketing, then you’re going to have a real problem on your hands.
• Branding for success doesn’t have to be expensive. Instead be consistent in telling people about what that customer experience is going to be. And match the experience to what you tell them.
• In a service-based business, the customer experience is as, or more important than the actual product.
• The customer experience is actually the more important part of branding. Sometimes, one incident can just kill the entire brand.

Meet the Mother of Divine Living, Gina DeVee

Divine Living begins with dreaming big. Master the art of divine living the mother of dreaming big, Gina DeVee. Gina has coached hundreds of women in exotic locations around the world where they come to master the art of divine living and building a life and business they love.

Gina’s own life is your template to create your own life of divine living. We as women still tend to seek permission or approval from some external source to go for our dreams. As a result, the notion of dreaming big is often not even in our conscious awareness.

Gina DeVee holds a special place in my heart, and I’m truly honored to have her as a guest on my show. I remember the weekend I attended one of her early events in Brentwood, California, one of my first ever marketing events to build an online business. It was at Gina’s live event that I first caught a glimpse of what my life could be. Because I was stuck in my “playing small” and searching for permission to be “seen and heard” I wasn’t totally ready to live that life of my wildest dreams. Yet, I found myself on stage as a member of her high-level coaching group… all six of us! That was then… this is now.

Gina understands the art of dreaming big and how it will, when accompanied by action, lead to you as the lead character in your own life—a life of divine living.

Gina DeVee has inspired thousands of women entrepreneurs around the globe to master divine living for themselves, while embracing their right and power to create a business and life they love.

It all Begins with Dreaming Big

Life is short . . . time is flying by. What big dream or vision do you hold in your heart that awaits manifestation in reality? Are you waiting for permission? I assure you, there’s only one person who can grant that permission, and that’s you. And if you can use a mentor on the path, listen in. Gina has lots to share to mentor you to that most special life, one of your wildest dreams!

The SAM SPLINT revolutionized emergency response

First responders around the globe rely upon Dr. Sam Scheinberg’s emergency splint in almost all on-scene emergencies. The disposable emergency splint helps first responders treat patients with suspected bone fractures of an arm, leg, or even the neck. For example, SAM SPLINT goes along for the ride with first responders on ski slopes. Those EMT teams that show up on-scene where bone fractures are present also whip out SAM SPINT to provide a portable, safe and effective tool for patients during transport for further medical treatment. This can include most other emergency response teams to fires, auto and industrial accidents, and countless other life-threatening situations. This simple and amazing product is now mandated as standard issue equipment to active military personnel engaged in armed combat. The SAM SPLINT rides in the backpacks of those serving around the globe.

Breakthrough: SAM IO For Intraosseous Access

Dr. Sam & Cheryl Scheinberg have gone on to grow Sam Medical into a well-respected and highly recognized developer of products for first responders. Their newest product the SAM IO allows first responders to inject live-saving medications into a patient’s bone in situations where access to a vein is not possible. Whether it is a heart attack at home, or in undeveloped countries where starvation can occur, the SAM IO is the latest breakthrough product at Sam Medical.

In this episode, Cheryl and The Scheinbergs discuss

• The journey of the SAM SPLINT from Sam’s closet to the backpacks of active military around the world.
• How Sam’s emergency splint has changed emergency response for first responders.
• The long patient journey from idea to salable product.
• Dr. Sam’s emergency splint is now ubiquitous in active military and first responders around the globe.
• The latest evolution from Sam Medical, the SAM IO, an Intraosseous Access System System.

Key Takeaways

• Everything seems to begin with an idea.
• Make sure that whatever you’re doing serves an unmet need.
• Understand how you’re measuring your progress.
• And don’t mistake action for progress.
• And when you don’t something, just know you don’t know and find somebody who does know it, and listen to him or her.

Brand Strategy to Launch

A brand strategy for launch, or when it’s time to rebrand is vital for the life and longevity of your brand. Brands that lead develop and implement a brand marketing strategy early in their business. A well-defined and executed brand strategy affects all aspects of a business and is directly connected to consumer needs, emotions, and competitive environments. A clear brand strategy is as important as your overall business plan. You can do amazing things with even tiny budgets, but you’ve got to figure out what you’re going to stand for in someone’s mind. First, what is that unique value?

Your brand strategy is going to create that human side to your brand, which is required to make the connection out in the marketplace and also make the point of difference out in the marketplace. It’s really important for startups to be thinking about that at the same time early and often in the development of the brand. Launching your business with a brand strategy is vital, since you don’t want to leave it up to your customers or your competitors to define what your brand is about. You have to consciously address it, or end up having it defined for you.

Brand Strategy to Evolve or Rebrand

Brands are never finished. They’re a river, not a pond. So that means you have to manage them. It’s not a set it and forget it thing. You have to evolve with it. You have to understand that the brand and your brand strategy has to be managed along with that change to create an up to date marketing strategy.

Your brand must be close with your target customers, especially when thinking of evolving your existing content marketing or digital marketing strategy. This is even true when opting to rebrand. We really have to understand what matters to customers so the brand can move along with them. Brands that look ahead to the future, understand that marketing strategy is creating the future. Use content marketing as part of the rebrand marketing strategy to paint a bigger vision of what’s ahead and how that can be exciting for your audience and customers.

In this episode Cheryl & Derrick Daye discuss

• A brand is the sum of all experiences a customer has with you. Everything, all of the touch points, everything adds up to this one thing, and that is your brand.”
• Each touch point where people are interacting with the brand is where the promise that you’re making to your customer must come to life.
• Today where trust really missing in parts of our society, your brand has to be a symbol of trust to lead today.
• Brand consistency is the backbone of trust. People watch your behaviors over time. They come to trust those behaviors and that’s a result of consistency. So if you are making changes with your brand, they should be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. A complete rebrand may not be in order, but evolution of your existing brand.
• Every action we do take, we have to be careful. And the moves we’re making and they have to be purposeful and they have to be on brand. They have to be meaningful to our target customers.

Key Takeaways

• Brands are never finished. They’re a river, not a pond. So that means you have to manage them. It’s not a set it and forget it thing. You have to evolve with it. You have to understand that the brand has to be managed along with that change.
• The fundamentals of brand management transcend all business inquiries in all stages of a business’s development. And as far as when you should be thinking about this is in the embryonic stages of your brand, you think about a business plan. At the same time, you should be thinking about your brand strategy.
• The brands that look ahead to the future understand that marketing is something that creates the future. They can use that to paint this bigger vision in their marketing strategy of what’s ahead and how that can be exciting for their target customers.

Freelance Copywriter Crafts Content Marketing

Effective content marketing requires a skilled copywriter. Email marketing remains the most valuable form of content marketing for any online business. Your email list a valuable business asset. Your email marketing list can’t be shut down by a change in Facebook algorithms. Yet, the key to developing a connection with potential clients or maintaining existing ones is effective copywriting. So, content marketing, specifically email marketing should be helpful, useful, relevant, valuable to your customer.

It’s vital to be able to write in someone’s voice. And there are two parts. First, there is the voice of the company, or the voice of the service provider, the brand voice, and then there’s the voice of customer.

Meet Kimberly Weitkamp, a freelance copywriter, my personal copywriter who helps create content marketing and email mail marketing campaigns to build your brand, be remembered, and remain connected to your clients.

Kimberly’s 4-Step Process for Marketing Conversion

Kimberly Weitkamp creates content marketing for marketing conversion using her 4-step Audience Converter Process. As Kimberly explains, great copywriting speaks to your customer‘s problems and needs in their language using your brand voice. In this interview, Kimberly shares brand voice examples, to show how the same topic can be written about differently using three different brand voice examples. Kimberly shares the importance of identifying the 2-3 types of people you’ll be speaking to, and the questions they are asking. Answering those questions in your content marketing is one of the keys to Kimberly’s process.

A great freelance marketing copywriter will have a process to get to know you, your business, and your own way of speaking and writing.

In this episode Cheryl & Kimberly discuss

• The key to any great email marketing campaign is “how can I help you?
• Make certain that the language you use matches who you are, but then also use language in your content marketing that matches what customers are actually searching for.
• Kimberly’s Audience Converter Method – A four-step process:
  1. Audience: Who are the people in the group that you’re going to be speaking to, that you’re actually going to help? There are usually 2 or 3.
  2. Ask: What are the questions these people are asking?
  3. Audit: Review your content marketing to find those questions and answers to them in your marketing Are there gaps between what they need to know at stage 1 and stage 4?
  4. Answer: Create marketing that answers those top questions that are missing.

Key takeaways

• Create long-term currency. Instead of focusing on “how can I get the next sale?” consider, “How can I create a great experience for this customer so they want to stay with me for longer and let their friends know about me too?”
• Make sure that you highlight that unique selling position in your copy. And copy can be used to kind of give a different perspective of something but you’re still talking about the same thing, right? Your unique selling proposition, unique selling position, USP.
• When looking for a copywriter, ask them about their process? Do they have a process, ask them about how they’re going to communicate with you?
• Always be testing, always be testing, always be testing. And if everything’s working properly, you’re not testing enough.

Podopolo: A New Platform for Podcast Marketing

Are you a podcaster, and learning the process of podcast marketing? In this episode, Melinda Wittstock shares her business, podcasting platform Podopolo. Podopolo is the first social media platform for podcasters and with a unique vision for podcast marketing. How can you attract sponsors for your show without knowing the demographics of your audience? The question of how to make money podcasting is closely related. In this interview, professional journalist and host of the Wings of Inspired Business Podcast, shares Podopolo’s difference from all other podcast platforms. Podcasters can now interact with their audiences and learn more about their listeners. Gathering listener data helps with podcast marketing campaigns. This data also helps attract the rights sponsors for the show as one learns how to make money podcasting.

In this episode, Cheryl and Melinda Wittstock discuss

• Podcast Marketing is changing with the Podopolo platform.
• Podopolo as the first podcasting platform to create social engagement with listeners.
• Podopolo allows podcasters to learn about their audience and own that data, unlike other podcast marketing platforms.
• To answer the question “how to make money podcasting” one needs to know the audience to attract paid sponsors for your show.
• Plan you podcast interviews based upon themes, not specific questions, so it can flow.

Key Takeaways

• Learn to work in your zone of genius and not on tasks that can be delegated.
• Don’t make the mistake of hiring too late.
• Hiring is not an expense. It’s an investment, since it allows you to double down on your own specific unique strengths.
• The best interviewers are great listeners.
• Ask easy questions to make the guest feel really comfortable.