What can we learn from the crazy world of Rock’n’Roll about branding?
One way to think about a brand is a kind of ‘shorthand’ designed to stop consumers from thinking about anything else other than your brand / product. Get branding right and you have customers for life. Get it wrong and you may never take off in business.
Take a look at this ‘basement video’ I made with my colleague Phil Hawthorn to understand the power of brands. We look at Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Nike, Madonna, Pepsi and Prince in this short video.
Unilever is a particularly interesting example of a brand which has managed to preserve the diversity of its many different operating companies, which, in their own words:
“We meet everyday needs for nutrition, hygiene and personal care with brands that help people feel good, look good and get more out of life”
This is exemplified down to the last detail in the logo for the company, which sells products from Dove, to Lipton Tea, to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and the logo carries meanings which include freshness, love, beauty, science, farming, freedom and so on – a pretty tall order for any corporation to live up to, but a mighty ambition nonetheless.
The ultimate test of a brand is the extent to which it enables your company to have longevity as Unilever have demonstrated over 120 years. To see what I mean through the power of music, take a look at the 45 year old brand that is Pink Floyd:
And finally, purely for fun, the word branding began simply as a way to tell one person’s cattle from another by means of a hot iron stamp. In a moment of musical madness, my Country and Western Glam Rock band (The Cowpokers) took this lesson literally, in a satirical pastiche of the classic Queen song ‘We Will Brand You’. The audience is initially deluded into thinking that the rhythm track will be exactly as the original, but later on find out that it is not….
We are speaking / performing about brands and customer service at the Customer Service Training Awards on Friday 8th July at Heathrow. Check out our starter menu of corporate event offerings for your next conference at RUEXPERIENCED.
Generate business success - get ranked #1 in Google
Anyone can be ranked #1 in Google – How to improve your website ranking
As the World Wide Web has become more popular with businesses all over the world, it has proven more difficult to rank a website on the first page of Google and other search engines through natural or organic listings. It can still be achieved, but can depend on the strength of your competition and whether the company is using so-called ‘white hat’ (legal and moral) strategies.
So when you next receive an email or cold call guaranteeing #1 in Google, be cautious but open-minded. I believe it is better to be candid and honest with all my clients. I will not guarantee something I cannot be absolute on. But by aiming at #1, even if you don’t make it, you will make your website more focused and achieve a much higher ranking than if you leave it to chance.
The SEO (search engine optimisation) tips below will give your company website focus which, if followed correctly, will strengthen your position in Google’s natural listings – the main list you do not pay for!
To begin…look at your website from your customers point of view
Make a list of words that you think your target audience would type into Google to find your website. This list may not include the same words as you would use to find the site yourself, so it is important to consider the terms your customers would use. These words are known as your ‘keywords’.
2. Now separate the keywords so each page, product and service has its own short, concise list.
3. Narrow each list down to between 6 – 10 keywords.
4. Add the keywords to the page content 6 times or more. Reiterate the keywords where possible being careful not to interrupt the flow of the text. Also include them in the page titles and any page associated filenames, such as images, videos etc.
5. When including images, be sure to add keywords in the image caption and ‘Alt Text’ description (this text shows when you place your mouse over the image).
6. Finally, get as many good quality, relevant websites to link to your website pages.
With links from authoritative websites and well written content that includes focused keywords, Google will increase the ranking of your pages. Once your pages are ranked in the top 10 (first page of Google) it will be easier for you to get better quality sites to link to your website.
Lastly, don’t give up too soon. This may take some time. Furthermore, don’t stop once you have achieved your goal. It’s tough at the top; and if you don’t keep a focus then one of your competitors will only too gladly take your place!
The Northern Ireland Business Innovation Centre (NORIBIC) certainly punches above its weight for a business support agency.
Recently they got a large audience to attend a magnificent event to ignite improvisation and innovation. Entitled “Jammy Creativity”, NORIBIC combined social networking with some serious messages about innovation, entrepreneurship and business development with the consumption of jam, via Fraser Doherty who is a 22 year old entrepreneur and founder of Superjam, which supplies sugar free jam to major supermarkets in the UK. What is really interesting about Fraser is how he managed to get past all the obstacles to get his product to market – no mean feat, when corporate buyers are concerned.
Alongside that, NORIBIC were kind enough to ask me to present ideas on corporate improvisation via a keynote seminar and a series of live demonstrations involving the audience. Dangerous stuff indeed, working with people you have never met before to produce beautiful music together! This culminated in a joint performance with members of Derry based rock / folk sensation John Derry and the Heads.
Here’s a video that NORIBIC made of the event for your enjoyment.
In the warped words of the Rolling Stones “It’s only jamming, but it leads to profitable innovation”…
Peter Cook is The Rock’n’Roll Business Guru and leads The Academy of Rock, delivering exceptional corporate events that blend business and music.
Social media is media that makes use of social interaction & uses accessible & interactive publishing techniques, allowing users (or readers) of a tool to interact with the content rather than simply read static content. This can be achieved by adding Comments to blogs and Re-tweeting (passing on) Twitter posts.
This is different to websites that simply transmit news.
The content can then be passed around in much the same way as viral marketing whereby you allow others to help promote your business.
Social Media is a new way to market business products & services online. It should be used alongside traditional offline marketing and other online marketing such as a company website.
There are plenty of social media tools to use, all of which will help to promote your business but there are certain things to consider. The main points being:
Spend time building up your followers/ readers
Do not try to oversell your company
• Be seen to be giving useful content for free
More so with social media than other ways of marketing, you need to ‘get involved’ with the medium and devote time interacting and regularly updating social media accounts to make them work for you.
Blogging needs regular interesting posts that will engage a target audience. I recommend a minimum of one post per week & not more than one per day, unless the information is time critical.
There are many of social media tools to use but never start using a new one. Always wait to see how popular a tool is & gauge whether it is right for you & engages your target audience.
If you are aiming at a school leaver / young adult market I would recommend you set up Facebook & Twitter accounts and, if you have interesting video content or the budget to produce it, a YouTube channel too.
As for blogging, you can setup a company blog, sometimes known as a ‘corporate blog‘ but it would also be beneficial to consider publishing articles on other popular blogs that have a young readership; and to consider not only banner advertising but articles of interest written in such a way to include links back to your website or blog rather than wanting other blogs to simply write about your products & services.
For example, to attract football fans during last summer’s World Cup in South Africa, Domino Pizza created free football related games & added them to a Facebook page. They then asked Buzzin Media to write & publish a football related articles including relevant backlinks to their website & their football game on Facebook. See buzzinfootball.co.uk.
By doing so, blog readers were more inclined to click on the links within a football post rather than click on a peripheral banner advertisement.
The main thing to consider is that all social media requires ongoing management. This is a service Buzzin Media can offer you or advice you on.
Buzzin Media is a UK based blog network with currently 33 popular blog titles covering business, entertainment & sport. For a more information and a complete list of current blog titles in the Buzzin Media blog network, visit www.buzzinmedia.co.uk.
The announcement of changes to the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) announced in George Osborne’s 2011 budget will see increased and easily accessible start-up capital for small business owners as well as R&D tax relief for UK SME’s. This coupled with Google’s organic search algorithm (known as ‘Panda’) update, which was made effective in the UK yesterday, gives SMEs a unique opportunity to drive sustainable growth online with this potential new funding; just as search marketing becomes even more effective for niche businesses.
In Google’s terms, the Panda update is designed “to reduce rankings for low-quality sites”. These are generally large content aggregator websites or ‘farms’ that “copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful”. According to Google, as many as 12% of search results were affected, with many sites losing significant visibility online.
“This isn’t a temporary measure either”, says Jack Adams, senior search manager at SearchCatalyst. “Google’s Panda update has been a long time coming, forming part of a more concerted effort to improve the visibility of unique, quality content in Google’s organic rankings and ultimately improve the user’s search experience.”
For every site that loses a ranking, one must gain; in this case, sites that purvey high quality, specialist content on a subject.
Adam’s concludes:
“With most UK SMEs being experts in their respective fields, the opportunity to attain search presence at the expense of large content aggregators – which previously would outrank smaller websites based purely on the inbound links spread thinly across their mass of content – is now more possible than ever before. Coupling this with potentially increased capital as a result of the revised Enterprise Investment Scheme, UK SMEs now also have the funding to realise this opportunity too”.
Over 80% of institutions polled agreed that innovation is either highly valued or a key
strategic priority in their organisation. At the inaugural European Innovation Conference in Denmark (29-31 March 2011), consultancy firm Market Gravity conducted an audience poll of business leaders from major European Corporates that revealed the following:
• The majority of respondents were confident that their organisations were structured
to encourage innovation
• 40% of respondents felt their organisation had stronger or much stronger
performance in terms of innovation than competitors
• The main barriers to innovation were identified as; resistance to change, short-term
investment criteria and a lack of resource
Gideon Hyde, Director at Market Gravity offered the following comments on the conference and survey results:
The survey clearly indicates that despite the fact that innovation is a key strategic priority
and expected to be a major contributor to revenues, businesses are still resistant to
change and have a short-term view.
Our discussions with conference attendees confirmed that there is widespread
investment in idea generation tools and platforms, but a lack of know-how in identifying
and developing commercially robust propositions and getting them to market.
Companies recognise that they lack the entrepreneurial skills to take big, break through
ideas to market. The biggest capability gaps are having the entrepreneurial leadership
and the backing of the organisation to set-up and deliver new business ventures.
Full Poll Results (53 respondents)
Question 1: What is the total number of employees at the organisation at which you
currently work?
a. 0-50 (4%), b. 51-2500 (22%), c. 2501-10,000 (16%), d. 10,000+ (58%)
Question 2: What sector do you work in?
a. Energy & Environment (15%), b. Financial Services (9%), c. Telecoms (4%), d.
Business Services (9%), e. Technology (19%), f. FMCG (13%), g. Other (31%)
Question 3: Where is your role based?
a. Great Britain (26%), b. Continental Europe (20%), c. Scandinavia (42%), d. Rest of
World (12%)
Question 4: To what extent do you feel that innovation is valued in your organisation?
a. Key strategic priority (53%), b. Highly valued (30%), c. Moderately valued (15%), d.
Not valued (2%)
Question 5: Do you feel your organisation is structured to encourage innovation?
a. Yes (60%), b. No (36%), c. Don’t know (4%)
Question 6: What do you believe to be the top three barriers to innovation in your
organisation?
a. Lack of resource (42%), b. Cost (23%), c. Lack of incentive (19%), d. Resistance to
change (45%), e. Short-term investment criteria (45%), f. Lack of structured approach
(38%), g. Not board level priority (11%), h. Other (21%)
Question 7: In the next three years, what percentage of your organisation’s revenues do
you expect to come from innovation (i.e. new or adjacent products/services, new
business ventures)?
a. 0% (2%), b. 1-25% (68%), c. 26-50% (15%), d. 51-100% (6%), e. Don’t know (9%)
Question 8: How do you feel your organisation performs against its competitors in terms
of innovation?
a. Much stronger (6%), b. We’re stronger (34%), c. We’re about the same (47%), d.
We’re weaker (13%), e. We’re much weaker (0%)
Everyone has an eye on ideas that claim to save money on their outgoing’s and the latest offer from Barclaycard certainly promises to be an eye catching offer that is impossible to refuse.
New customers transferring an outstanding credit card debt to Barclaycard Platinum will be doing more than just giving themselves breathing space, they will also be getting what is the longest 0% on balance transfers offer in the market today.
As if that is not good enough news, customers signing up between March 15th and May 3rd 2011 can also take advantage of a 25% reduction on the handling charge when transferring multiple balances from other lenders – the highest balance transfer will incur a handling fee of 3.2%, with any additional transfers seeing effective handling fees of 2.74%.
Furthermore, new customers to Barclaycard Platinum will be charged 0% on new purchases for three months.
Like anyone else I am always happy to witness banks offering great deals to their customers, but you have to ask if this latest incentive isn’t a move back towards the days of pre financial crisis when as a nation we were continually being encouraged to heap ourselves in debt.
It surprises me somewhat that institutions the size of Barclaycard feel the need to encourage bad debtors to their company, when a simple cut in interest charged to existing customers might provide a better stimulus to get customers who pay their bills to spend more.
But then again I don’t run Barclaycard and looking at the deal from a financial situation, would recommend anyone with existing credit card debt to take advantage of the Barclaycard Platinum deal.
However if this sounds like a temporary route out of financial trouble for you, be sure to check out the Barclaycard Terms & Commissions that apply to this product.
Many people who decide to start their own company do so because they have a talent for the work they do and a level of experience that leads them to believe they would be better off at the helm of an operation rather than serving as a minion working to line the pockets of someone else.
However, while this enterprising spirit is to be rewarded many people who decide to take the initiative and set up their own operation find that the paperwork and responsibility involved is more work and more hassle than they had anticipated. Often newly set up employers find that they become bogged down in the administration of their entrepreneurial efforts to the point where they are unable to focus on their main area of expertise.
With the help of an umbrella company, small business bosses can delegate the responsibility for much of this everyday administration freeing them from the responsibility and worry of dealing with complex payroll and tax issues.
If a business boss decides to avail themselves of the services of an umbrella company they instantly pass over the responsibility for the payroll management of their concern. In the event that an umbrella company is engaged, workers are essentially employed by the umbrella company, rather than by the business to which they are providing the service. This can not only reduce employers’ administrative responsibilities but can also help to limit employer liability for small business bosses.
When workers carry out tasks for the company, they do so as an employee of the umbrella concern. The umbrella concern handles all payments on your behalf, dealing with such issues as the deduction of tax and national insurance contributions at source and issues monies to those working for your business.
Are They Any Downsides to Using an Umbrella Company?
For business bosses who are not au fait with the administrative side of things, using the services of an umbrella company can seem like the perfect solution – but many who consider the option wonder what possible pitfalls exist to the arrangement.
Certainly there is a cost involved and fees will need to be paid to the umbrella company to process payments on behalf of employees – these may come from the business or from the workers, depending on the arrangements reached.
For some workers, the concept of umbrella company employment is an alien one, and some may be put off by the unconventional arrangement – however in these straightened financial times, as the recognised rules of employment engagement become more and more blurred many service providers are becoming more and more willing to consider alternative working practices in order to earn a wage.
How Can I Use an Umbrella Company?
Setting up an account with an umbrella company is a relative simple process and, once in place, allows business bosses to take a hands-off approach to employee pay. Most companies offer employer advisors who will be able to take prospective clients through the payroll process.
A couple of years back as the enormity of the financial crisis hit home in the UK, the market for cheaper food and clothing products started to prosper, and with less money in many pockets to spend on such items, shops like Primark and Aldi began to enjoy a new found status in England as the outlets that we were most likely to visit as a matter of choice.
The ‘throw away fashions’ of Primark bucked the trend in high street shopping as customers chose to spend much less in monetary terms for much more in quantity, of lower quality clothing.
Primark have indeed been one of the few success stories of the credit crunch, but figures released by the company today, come with a worrying warning of a noticeable slowing down in demand in the UK since the start of 2011.
While Primark outlets in the rest of Europe continue to enjoy a healthy output, shops in the UK have suffered where it hurts most as shoppers have been hit with a rise in VAT, soaring cotton prices and less disposable income.
The announcement by Primark saw share values in the company which is owned by Associated British Foods, fall by almost 6% despite the European market holding up.
Primark operates 214 stores mostly in the UK, although it also trades in the Republic of Ireland, Spain, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium.
Economists worried by the falling figures at Primark, are keeping a watchful eye on other high street outlets and remain cautious in the short term about the general retail sector.
How often have you considered simply packing in your job and becoming your own boss? Most of us have at least mooted the idea once or twice, only to be prevented from taking the plunge by a sudden fear of failure. Certainly, for anyone in a salaried position taking the leap of faith into self employment is a scary moment, but with online business workers can build an empire slowly in their spare time, allowing them to make a pain-free transition into the world of online work, where they can finally set their own timetable.
There are a wide range of online professions open to just about anyone with a level of enthusiasm and aptitude and while most involve a learning curve of some sort, the beauty of online business is that most workers will be able to find message boards and forums where others offer advice and support as well as the benefit of their own experience.
Earn Money Online from Blogging
One popular way of earning money online is through blogs. Blogs, or weblogs to give them their full title, are an online self publishing tool allowing the creator to share content on any subject they wish. While in the early days of blogging these vehicles served as something of an online journal for their creators, modern day blogging is much more targeted and the savvy online entrepreneur can create earning opportunities through their blog in a number of ways, from targeted advertising with revenue share schemes, to affiliate marketing to the promotion of self produced products or services.
Blogging for cash is a competitive market and those new to the game would do well to carry out some research before creating any content and learn about search engine optimisation (SEO) which is essential to anyone hoping to make money this way. The same thing is true for those hoping to gain cash through the creation of their own niche websites – since learning how to rank highly in organic searches is the key to all internet success.
Why Not Turn Pro at Online Poker?
If you want to get into a field that has more of an element of entertainment about it, why not consider trying your hand at casino gaming for cash? Many people enjoy a flutter on the bingo or are happy to play a hand of poker in their spare time but never consider their pastimes’ real money making potential.
For those that find they have a propensity for the game, there is money to be made in online gambling through sites such as Party Poker Bonus Codes available online allow new users to benefit from free games allowing them to hone their skills in this area before having to invest their own money into the enterprise.
While there is no guarantee of winning in any stakes game, some people certainly find they have a talent for taking the pot in this online environment and a number have turned that into a profitable profession.
