The Difference Between Promotional and Engaging [Infographic]

Digital communications revolve around establishing engaging interactions with your audience. Yet many small businesses still send out non-engaging, sales oriented messages in a world where two-way conversations are encouraged. We have attempted to highlight the difference between promotional and engaging ways of interacting with your audience in the digital realm by visually pointing out the contrast of the two approaches. 

Perhaps Gail Goodman (marketing engagement expert) explained it the best with the statement below:

A simple but powerful idea: When you connect with your customers online, you stop speaking to your customers and start talking with them... and then wonderful things begin to happen.

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<p> <b>Please include attribution to Brand Lounge - Encouraging Digital Branding Conversations with this graphic.</b><br /><br /><a href='http://www.brand-lounge.nrdigitalbranding.com/2014/01/difference-between-promotional-and-engaging-marketing-infographic.html'><img src='https://s3.amazonaws.com/easel.ly/all_easels/147001/EmailMarketingStatsNRDB/image.jpg' alt='SMB Email Marketing Infograrphic' width='540px' border='0' /></a>
By no means is this a complete list of differences between promotional and engaging interactions - we would love to hear what you think some of the differences are between the two. Let us know in the comment section below!

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Unknown Thursday, January 02, 2014  

2013 SMB Digital Marketing Holiday Wish List

Small businesses are always looking to improve their marketing and brand. With the year coming to an end, here are some things that I think small business owners would like to stuff their stockings with in order to get their organization and online community humming in the new year.

Stocking Stuffer #1: Responsive Online Hub

This is an idea that you may or may not have already come across, but it is something that every organization should be focusing on. As most blogs and business articles may have highlighted the trend for 2013 - it is now going to move into the affordable pricing for all business. With plenty of responsive design services available online, small businesses and organizations should be taking advantage in building their websites to be optimized for multiple devices. Why?

Well the way people interact and view content is shifting towards mobile. With ongoing statistics indicating the increase use of mobile devices for browsing, shopping, and content consumption it will be crucial for SMBs in effectively catering to their community.

Stocking Stuffer #2: Dedicated Online Involvement

The hardest part of having an effective branding strategy for the digital landscape. To really have an

effect online - there needs to be a significant amount of time invested in creating engaging content, interacting with audience and continuously improving your online hub. While having a digital media or marketing specialist is a privilege most small business can't afford, it would be the ideal situation. If this is not an option look into training current employees with the basics of SEO, web design, social media, etc. and have them be involved in all of your corporate efforts online. If that is not an option, look into the different digital branding services available and include these expenses into the annual marketing budget.

Another important factor in having this dedication last throughout the year (avoiding burn-out after the first few weeks) is to include it into the annual business planning. Most organizations budget their expenses for the year, plan their holiday events, promotions but very few include their online efforts into those plans. Create a content calendar, schedule updates, allocate employee (or personal) time to these efforts as they are as important as all other parts of your business!

Stocking Stuffer #3: Analytics Turned Into Analysis

Get involved in analytics - but don't just track numbers for the sake of tracking numbers and stats. Set goals, measure them and see how you are performing against your own expectations. Having numbers turned into meaningful results (whether positive or negative) is critical into successfully improving upon all of your digital efforts.


The most common website tracking service for website stats is Google Analytics, but having ways to measure social media efforts, email marketing, content reach and other online tactics is important as well. Find tools that are suitable for your organization, employ them and turn numbers into meaningful insights.

Stocking Stuffer #4: Subscribe To a Good Blog

Keeping up with the latest developments within your industry, online trends or just general business news. Blogs are not only a great way to stay up to date, but to learn something new - a way to engage on social media better than now, learn how to edit HTML web pages, increase email campaign responses, etc. Following a good blog can also connect you to industry experts, which can lead to establishing a new network to share ideas and knowledge.

For a good list of online marketing blogs covering everything from design to conversion, you can take a look at a solid list from unbounce here. So snuggle up for the winter season and increase your RSS feed with some of these great blogs.


What would you put as part of your small business holiday wish list for 2013? Leave your thoughts in the comment section and let us know!

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Unknown Sunday, December 08, 2013  

Creating a Digital Brand Personality

By now you may have created social media profiles on behalf of your organization, developed a solid website and gotten a number of likes in various social spheres. Now what? The next step after this is something that SMB organizations seem to struggle with the most - transitioning from "we are on social media" to "we are having fun, converting and rocking out on social media". Effective digital branding demands continuous engagement and interactions with audience members.

If you have already been fortunate enough to gain someone's trust and interest online (not an easy feat by any means nowadays) why not keep it? It is not enough to have someone visit your website, and afterwards hope that they make an action simply based on that one interaction. A customer experience spans beyond a shopping cart, a contact form or call-to-action click. It goes to further lengths of conversation, reviews, interaction with peers...a memorable online experience. You have to create an impression as a publisher of information and/or service, a personality that will attract and keep attention of potential customers.

In order to take your brand to the next level and have it rock out (and convert) in the world wide web you need to consider the following aspects of all of your online touch points:

1) Where is the Conversation Taking Place?

If you are sending out tweets five times a day, yet no one pays attention - you are not utilizing Twitter effectively. Do not be on a social media network just for the sake of having a presence there, or because "everyone else is on there".

Your social media plan needs to be carefully laid out: do the research - see where your customers are most active, what they are talking about and how you can join the conversation. Perhaps most of your audiences uses Pinterest due to the overwhelmingly visual nature of your content and find it easier to Pin and comment as opposed to tweet.

Image courtesy of bplanet / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Being in the right place is as important as being part of the right conversation.

2) Am I Part of the Right Conversation?

Your website may rank well for the keyword "fast food restaurant" but majority of people are searching for "best burgers in town" - you will not be connecting or engaging the right audience. Fast food is a general term that applies to a vast category of food: is it a pizza restaurant? fried chicken? hot dogs? It needs to be specific, and focus on locality in which your customers and potential audience members are active in.

Once you establish the right presence and become part of the right conversations, you start to mold the perception around your brand. This will give you the ability to not only influence that perception in a direct way, but to determine what type of perception is currently circulating within your targeted community. Utilizing effective social media marketing services or having a dedicated person for digital interactions is crucial in joining the right conversation, and making your brand participants feel as if they are on a cloud - which brings us to our next point.

3) Make Audience Feel as if They're on a Cloud

No - this does not necessarily mean to bring them into a Salesforce database (although it could be beneficial as part of an overall approach). It means that their online interaction with your brand need to cater to their needs and ways of communicating digitally. Did you share something useful? Help them solve a problem? Entertained them in some way? Contributed to finding something important?

Image courtesy of Kittisak / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

All interactions digitally (and all other marketing efforts) need to be customer oriented, not product or service oriented. Branding efforts need to focus on the customers and their concerns - making sure that messages and interactions are delivered at the right time, in the right context and in a meaningful way. Bring each customer into the cloud and have them float there every time your brand is in question.

4) Encourage Digital Participation Internally

This seems to be a major road-block for building an effective digital brand personality for most SMB companies: blocking social media access, internet browsing, IM tools and other digital means of collaborating. While sales personnel are encouraged to, and most of the time provided with a mobile device - marketing or branding positions have access to certain websites, and the rest of the organization ranging from admin roles to higher management are not permitted to participate in the online conversation.

What is wrong with having your employees contribute to your brand? Yes there need to be guidelines outlined to using these digital communications so that people do not get sidetracked. And yes, there also needs to be a shift towards opening up channels to employees because they can be brand ambassadors and contribute to building your brand. There is nothing more encouraging to potential customers than hearing employees, executives, management and everyone that is part of the brand resonate the same message. It strengthens perception, gives confidence and engages everyone involved (employees and customers).

It is your brand after all - limiting people whether internal or external will only strain relationships and straining relationships can be the breaking point between having loyal customers or losing customers.

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Unknown Sunday, November 03, 2013