If you’re going to target a competitor you have to follow a few key principles:

1. Stick to your guns – there’s nothing worse than a brand that backtracks.
2. Be ready and prepared for retaliation
3. Disrupt the market and challenge perceptions

What are the pillars of the Red Bull marketing success?

Brand associating is the cornerstone of the Red Bull marketing strategy. They invest a lot of time and money on associating the brand with the lifestyle of extreme athletes and entertainers.

How does Red Bull marketing accomplish this?

Red Bull spends an unbelievable 30-40% of their revenue on marketing. That’s unheard of for an established brand but it goes a long way to explaining their market position and the size of the market as a whole.

The majority of Red Bull’s marketing mix is split between:

• Content Marketing
• Television Advertising
• Experiential Marketing
• Social Media
• Sports and Entertainment Sponsorship

What’s the perception and what’s the reality?

The billions of dollars spent on marketing have translated into people from all demographics drinking Red Bull. In reality, 5% of Red Bull drinkers may be snowboarders, motocross riders, pole vaulters or participate in any of the other types of sports that are sponsored. You have IT workers, photographers, electricians and university lecturers all drinking Red Bull.

How can we use this reality to turn Red Bull’s strategy against them?

By releasing provocative marketing and advertising that shows tired middle-aged men drinking red bull, you attack the authenticity that Red Bull so heavily relies on. Consumers will begin to ask themselves if reality meets perception and will see the brand in a different light.

Dipping your toes in the water when entering a market is a long and exhausting way to go about it. If you can find a chink in your competitors armor and you have the resources to back it up, go for it!

This observation is hardly new, so why am I talking about it on a small business marketing blog? It’s because SME’s still just don’t get it.

You’ve encountered hundreds of brands this year. Of those brands, how many told you a story about how they came to start their brand or what they really care about as a brand? Stories are personal and engaging.

Start telling your story on your website, through a video, through a series of Facebook posts or on a post it note stuck to your next letter.

I promise you - start developing stories and people will care. When people care about your brand they spend more and talk more.

Further Reading

CopyBlogger has a great post that discusses how to write your story and what angle to go for.

>> Read it here.

There’s no doubting it. Google search is the lifeblood of many small businesses. It almost takes us back to the days of only needing an ad in the Yellow Pages for the phone to ring. Search Engine Optimisation can be one of the best investments a business can make, but what would happen to your sales if you suddenly lost your page 1 ranking?

With so many customers coming through Google, many businesses are unknowingly failing to dedicate resources to other marketing channels, virtually risking their entire marketing mix on a high Google ranking.

You wouldn’t invest all of your money on a single company in the share-market. Why do it in marketing?

It’s critically important to reduce your reliance on a single marketing tactic. Whether its Google or a partner business that have been passing on sales, by spreading out your marketing mix in different areas, you’ll reduce the risk of slow sales if a marketing channel stops working for you.

Mike’s advice: If a single marketing tactic is bringing over 50% of your sales, start looking at how you can improve other marketing channels to safeguard your business.

We’ve complied a list of the most valuable traits of an effective marketing team.

1. The ability to be on your toes and make quick decisions
2. The vision to predict changes and opportunities (an entrepreneurial spirit is incredibly valuable but not always necessary)
3. The guts to try something bigger and bolder than what your market’s already doing
4. Personality that can be expressed through your brands (often, brands are just an extension of a person with a vision for the brand)
5. The intellect to execute tasks with attention to detail (you’d be amazed at how many trained marketers can’t execute)

What do you think? If you had a team like this at your disposal, would it make a big difference to your business?

At what point does good customer service pay for itself and move from wishful thinking to a smart investment in your time and money?

The Formula

Sale Margin (Number of previous W.O.M. leads X Rate of viral spread X Percentage of spread to buy) = Return

Example

Bob’s sporting goods company are thinking of investing in a training course for one of their staff members. The training course costs $2000 and trains staff in going out of their way to delight customers, living the brand and providing tools for customers to share their experience.

Bobs sporting goods company metrics are:

• Rate of Viral Spread (8x – we estimate that good customer service increases word of mouth spread by an average factor of 8)
• Cost of Extra Service ($2000 – for training course)
• Average Sale Margin ($18)
• Percentage of Viral Spread to Purchase (13%)
• Number of Word of Mouth Leads Annually (130)

18 (130 X 8 X 0.13) = $2,433

In this example, you can see that Bobs sporting goods company made a profit of $433 on their $2000 investment in customer service training.

In Practice

This formula won’t be right for everyone and it’s not taking into account many other factors that influence your ability to sell or your rate of viral spread or sell once you get them in the door, but it gets you thinking about the financial value of investing in improved customer service and in 2012, that is regularly ignored and incredibly valuable.

Smart businesses that provide great customer service:

• Invest in social media
• Give you the tools to share your experience while your experiencing it (think iPads or iPods while your enjoying a massage or a sign saying check in on Facebook while your waiting to order your drink at the bar
• Create events to bring friends along
• Identify, target and charm influential customers

It’s all about the experience. You can buy a good drink from any of hundreds of bars around Melbourne. The Honey Bar thrives because they’re all about the experience (just ask anyone who’s ever dropped in for a drink or bite to eat).

The challenge is to look at how you can maximize the experience of a customer when they buy a product that they could easily get somewhere else.

What they did well

• They put their product in front of their market when it’s most relevant
• They explained why you need it (preserves look, prevents cracks)
• They made you feel confident in using it (easy instructions)
• They showed you where to buy it
• They had the guts to approach another company with their offer (the most important of all)

What’s preventing you from starting a similar marketing partnership?

One of the first things that we focus on when working with a new client is their current marketing mix. We can come up with all the great ideas in the world, but their existing tactics could be leaking money that could be redistributed towards tactics that are going to work.

How to bring accountability to your marketing spend

1. Make a list of your annual marketing activities
2. Work out the percentage of your budget that they each account for
3. Estimate their effectiveness on a scale of 1-10
4. Note next to each if the tactic’s cost is rising (yes/no)
5. Note next to each if the tactic is becoming less effective (yes/no)
6. Note next to each if the tactic is becoming more effective (yes/no)

The conference was a real eye opener. With the competitiveness of the US Search Market, small businesses need to be very saavy in the way they market their website to outrank their competitors and stand out in the crowded market place.

As Australian business owners, we are at an advantage – our market is much smaller and under capitalized in comparison-which means our job as business owners is a little easier.

Below are some important findings to come out of Pubcon Vegas 2011 on Google Places SEO.

Get your listing right first time 

Getting the data in your Google Places listing right the first time is really important. Google puts a huge amount of emphasis on the accuracy and relevance of their results, and its in your best interests to help them achieve this.

I won’t go through every single element here, but here are some vital tips to get you on the right track:

• Business Title: Use your real business Name here. It’s tempting to put some important keywords in here but you want to keep it clean and real.
• Also resist the urge to insert your geographic location into the title, Google already knows your address.
• Use a local phone number: Always use a local phone number with the relevant prefix for you location. If you are in Melbourne.
• Pictures and Videos: You can have up to 10 images and 5 videos-use them all. In saying that, don’t just put useless images up, make them relevant to your business and useful to customers. Have photos of your products, you office, your street-things that will help customers make a decision.

Reviews count for ALOT

Google Places functions on a user review system, much like many ‘directory’ style sites online today. The amount, quality, and relevance of your reviews actually has an impact on where you will appear in the Google Places results.

So how do you get more user reviews without just asking your mates (Please don’t do this…)

• Encourage user reviews: Place a link on website with a ‘leave me a review’ link to your Google Places page.
• Put a link on your email signature ‘Leave us a Google Review’. Even further incentivise with an offer like “Win a bottle of  wine with every review”
• When you send out your client christmas gifts, ask your clients to do something for you by leaving you a Google Review. Maybe a little cheeky-but a good time to ask no doubt.

And the two secret ingredients are…

The above tips are a great starting point and are very easy to get right. But if you are looking for that extra edge and that little boost up the rankings:

• hCard Microformats: Google is smart, but time poor. It likes to be able to find information to list in its search results in the easiest and quickest way possible-so lets make it really easy for them.
• Microformats is a way to list all your business address details in a format that Google is really familiar with and will recognise right away. List your address in your footer in microformats and your results will improve without doubt.
• Other Local Directories: If you have listing in other directories such as hotfrog, dmoz, or truelocal to name a few, make sure all your information matches up. Google does read all these listings and it’s important they are all giving out the same message.

Google Maps is a great opportunity for your business to quickly and easily take advantage of Google push to become more local. It’s time to start enjoying some local leads!

This is a guest post from James Richardson. James is director of Optimising, an SEO, PPC, Web Development agency based in Melbourne. He has worked in the Online Marketing industry for the past 7 years, and has helped over 500 businesses  achieve more success with Google”

Don’t let the fact that you’re a small business stop you from associating your brand with these same emotions and aspirations. You can easily and cheaply associate your own brand with positive images.

3 Examples of brand association

Teenage market – sponsor some emerging athlete’s with large social networks. Release easily sharable branded content (video’s, photo’s, flyer’s, etc.).

http://vimeo.com/12662845

Melbourne surf/skate/snowwear retailer Ballistyx (disclosure – Ballistyx are a client of Engage Marketing) took the bold step of producing their own TV show which was spread through social networks and picked up on free to air TV. Your own video content can easily be taken on an iPhone – it’s cheap, raw and authentic.

Street culture – develop a street culture style of language, photograph your brand in well known cultural areas, etc.

Melbourne up-cycle brand Haul targeting the edgy, urban crowd in their product photography.

Community – Sponsor a variety of sporting clubs, get out and about on the streets handing out freebies and running unusual and interesting promotions, sponsor an event.

Bendigo Bank invest a great deal in community sport sponsorship - a move that has helped to secure a growing share of the market.

The first steps to improving your brand association

Using social media? Social media is the easiest way to build your brand association and add meaning to your brand. By posting links to video’s, photo’s, people and events that increase your brands interest and appeal, you’ve taken the first steps to relating your brand with positive associations.

A final word

Remember that in the end, branding is all about making yourself more desirable in order to build lasting relationships with customers. The more you try and brand your small business, the more you have to lose but by offering trust and security in your brand, you’ll go along way to increasing both your appeal and value.