Propel: Five Ways to Amp-Up Your Marketing and Accelerate Business
224
Propel: Five Ways to Amp-Up Your Marketing and Accelerate Business
224Paperback(First Edition)
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Overview
Propel: Five Ways to Amp Up Your Marketing and Accelerate Business is the ideal guide for marketing with tips, tools and trends for social media, word of mouth marketing, publicity, and more. It offers a straightforward, five-step approach to use the power of direct marketing to get to the next level. Propel shows how large corporations, small businesses, nonprofits, schools, governments, and other organizations can quickly reach the right people at the right time in the right way - to get the right results.
Including over 50 real-world examples of success and compelling case studies of digital and traditional marketing and PR success from around the world, this is a practical guide to help you break through all the noise in the marketplace and connect with the people you need to reach the most.
Propel: Five Ways to Amp Up Your Marketing and Accelerate Business offers a go-to marketing resource for entrepreneurs, business owners, nonprofit directors. Even people working in marketing or publicity departments, as teachers and professors, and in agencies can use Propel to turn marketing ideas into strategic action that gets real results - fast.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781601632333 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 08/22/2012 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Pick Your Priorities
Tamika Vinson works as a financial service counselor helping students navigate the system so they can secure enough money to pursue their educational dreams. But Tamika has a dream of her own. In the next year, she plans to open a retail store for women called iChelle. She's not alone. According to a 2011 report released by Dun & Bradstreet on the state of small business, the United States has seen the highest percentage of startups in more than a decade, despite the recession. Tamika's already starting to think about how best to get the word out about her business to potential customers, but she knows before she heads too far down the promotional path she needs to map out a longer-term vision for her business. And she's right.
As I mentioned earlier in the book, marketing is a lot of fun. You get to do all sorts of creative things such as produce videos and hold online contests for your customers. Yet this is part of the reason why so many business owners struggle with marketing. They haven't pictured where they want to go and what they need to do to succeed. They often end up wasting time and resources on ineffective marketing activities and don't get the results they desperately need.
I promise you'll get to focus on all sorts of fun marketing activities very soon, but for now, I don't want you to think about anything specific. I want you to open yourself up to amazing possibilities. To envision your broad future, imagine the big picture of what you're really trying to accomplish and where you ultimately want to be with your business. Believe it or not, in order to be strategic with your marketing, you actually have to do some dreaming first. I'd like you to start thinking about your pie-in-the-sky ideas and extremely lofty ambitions. What I'm describing is your vision.
Many people use the terms vision and mission interchangeably. However, they are meant to be two entirely different things intended to help you get both inspired and focused. Vision and mission statements are foundational parts of business planning and play a key role in making your marketing work, too. In a nutshell, the vision is a descriptive picture of the future, and the mission is an action statement for the here and now that moves you toward the vision. I'll spend a bit more time on both so you can see the role they play in your business and marketing efforts.
VISION
A vision is intended to be a statement that sums up your organization's aspirations, hopes, and dreams. This phrase describes how your organization envisions the future and what your image is of a perfect world. It's a long-term view of what you're striving for. Most business planning is for a one- to five-year time frame, but an effective vision statement can include a much longer time frame. It's what you envision might be possible in the next 10, 20, maybe even 100 years from now. In fact, you may never achieve it. That's not the point. It's more of a dream; an inspirational message. It gives you a place in the distant horizon to focus on; it's absolutely within sight, but not within reach — yet. It should help motivate you, your staff, and, if you choose to share it externally, even your customers. Change the world. Make things better for kids. Help the environment. These are the things dreams — and vision statements — are made of.
I first came across this type of vision statement back when I worked at Microsoft. At that time, Bill Gates mapped out a very clear vision for the company: Put a computer on every desktop.
This simple, clear statement served a very strategic purpose in exciting customers around the world. It also helped to motivate employees like me. Everyone knew what the company was working toward. Would we ever see it happen? At that time in the industry, it was a huge stretch. But the idea kept us focused and we worked hard to try to get there someday.
Vision statements aren't set in stone. They need to be designed to change and evolve. In time, with the introduction of products such as the Xbox and Internet Explorer, Microsoft was becoming more than just a business putting software CDs in boxes. And as more and more people started to work remotely and on mobile devices, the company needed a new vision statement to re-inspire employees and get customers and partners jazzed again. Microsoft eventually changed its vision: To help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential. The new sweeping phrase allowed the company to think even more broadly about how it could help people and organizations do more. This vision is still used by the company today.
Here are a few more examples of vision statements:
* Nike: "To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world"
* Goodwill Industries International: "To ensure every person has the opportunity to achieve his/her fullest potential and participate in and contribute to all aspects of life"
Keep in mind, the vision for your organization is meant to motivate future action and is not limited by your current situation. In the book First Things First, Stephen Covey describes it this way: "... vision is the ability to see beyond our present reality, to create, to invent what does not yet exist, to become what we not yet are. It gives us capacity to live out of our imagination instead of our memory." Here's an example of how to put this into play for a smaller organization. Tamika, the soon-to-be entrepreneur I mentioned at the start of this chapter, also has a vision for her business, iChelle: "To create a nationally recognized brand that helps shape future leaders and uplift neighborhoods."
Fueled by this powerful vision of where she wants to take her business and the positive impact it will make in communities around the United States, Tamika is ready to map out the next strategic part of her planning: her mission statement.
MISSION
If you think of your vision statement as being aspirational, the mission is all about action. In this way, the mission statement works hand-in-hand with the vision. It touches on the core purpose of your organization and what you're doing now to strive toward reaching your vision in the future. What steps are you taking to bring that vision closer and within reach?
To give you an example of how the two statements work together, here's an inspirational vision statement for Dress for Success, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of women in 110 cities across 12 countries. The organization provides professional clothing, employment retention programs, and ongoing support to its clients, helping them be self-sufficient and professionally successful. Its vision is: "To promote the economic independence of disadvantaged women."
Now take a look at the organization's mission statement. It does a good job of explaining how Dress for Success plans to take action and work toward making that vision come true: "We help disadvantaged women find and maintain employment, become financially savvy, improve their health and wellness, and achieve self-defined success."
Now I want to shift gears and focus again on Tamika's business. She too has a mission statement that is intended to help her take the right steps today to reach her longer-term vision for iChelle: "To help women feel confident, comfortable, and beautiful by providing affordable, upscale fashion and career development opportunities."
Do you see how this message supports Tamika's long-term vision for the business? She eventually plans to grow iChelle by adding new locations and potentially franchising once the company's brand is nationally recognized. She also plans to give back to the community by creating jobs and internship opportunities. She's unable to do all of these things in the first few years of her business, but she's now on a mission to work toward reaching them.
VALUES
For an organization's vision and mission to truly be effective, they must both reflect the organization's values. These are the core beliefs in your business that are shared with everyone internally and, in many cases, externally. They help define and determine your culture and work together with your vision and mission. The three form a helpful framework you can use to better run your business and make smarter, more strategic marketing decisions.
On a personal level, our values come into play on a daily basis. If you value having a healthy lifestyle, you probably demonstrate that value by watching what you eat and exercising regularly. You may make a decision to invest in a gym membership or take time to go on a long walk with a friend a few times a week.
Business values are no different. They are usually a list of words or statements that outline what's important to your organization and the core things that will guide and influence your attitudes and behavior. For example, if your organization values professional development, you might support an employee who wants to help your marketing efforts by speaking on an expert panel for the chamber of commerce. If you value work-life balance, you can justify your decision to leave work early on Thursday to attend an after-hours wine-tasting to have fun discovering new bottles. And who knows, you just might end up doing some networking and exploring new business development opportunities as well.
With more than 310 stores in North America and the United Kingdom, Whole Foods is a global leader in the natural and organic food business. The company has done an excellent job of creating a set of core values that accurately reflect what is truly important to the organization. They not only support the organization's vision and mission of environmental sustainability and corporate responsibility, but they are also the underpinning of the company's culture and are intended to remain constant. Whole Foods's Website reads, "Many people feel Whole Foods Market is an exciting company of which to be a part and a very special place to work. These core values are the primary reasons for this feeling, and they transcend our size and our growth rate. By maintaining these core values, regardless of how large a company Whole Foods Market becomes, we can preserve what has always been special about our company. These core values are the soul of our company:
* Selling the highest quality natural and organic products available
* Satisfying and delighting our customers
* Supporting team member happiness and excellence
* Creating wealth through profits and growth
* Caring about our communities and our environment
* Creating ongoing win-win partnerships with our suppliers
* Promoting the health of our stakeholders through healthy eating education."
Do you see how these values statements would then help Whole Foods make smarter, more strategic decisions about its marketing? For example, on the company's blog, it features a two-minute video about Gaia Herbs, a certified organic herb farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. Located on 250 acres of certified organic river bottom soil and growing roughly 50 different crops, the farm is one of the largest medicinal herb farms in the United States. This directly supports many of Whole Foods's values, including selling the highest quality of organic products, creating partnerships with suppliers, and delighting customers.
Tamika is still working to finalize her list of company values, but she knows they will include the following principles she thinks are important, not only to the success of iChelle, but also to the satisfaction of her customers:
* Offering high-quality products
* Delivering exceptional service
* Providing support and career development for staff
* Creating an inviting experience in-store and online
* Improving our local communities
GOALS
Once you've got your vision, mission, and values mapped out, the next things you need to clarify are your goals and objectives. They too help serve as a compass to keep you pointed in the right direction. If you find yourself in a new environment or situation and you get off track, you can refer back to them to become realigned. With a clear goal in hand, even if you wander off the trail a bit to check out a squirrel (or explore a new social media tool), you can easily get right back to focusing on where you need to go.
Here we again have two terms that can be easily confused with each other — goals and objectives. I'll start with goals. You can think of them as slightly more defined versions of your vision statement. Goals come in all shapes and sizes. There are long-term goals and short-term goals, big ones and little ones, easy-to-do goals and very challenging ones. It doesn't matter where you start; you just need to pick one. For example, on a personal level, your goal might be to take a trip to Europe, learn how to cook a soufflé, or start getting massages more often. Now let's shift gears and put the practice of goal-setting into business terms.
Here is a list of common goals that you might want to accomplish:
* Earn more revenue.
* Secure more customers.
* Hold an event.
* Open a second location.
* Produce Web videos.
* Get your name in the news.
* Get more hits to your Website.
Tamika's business hasn't launched yet, but she's already defined one clear goal: Successfully open iChelle's first location.
Do you see how all of these goals are somewhat vague? They make sense but, because they are broad, there is still plenty of room for more specific details. That's where your objectives come into play.
OBJECTIVES
The term objective is used all the time in marketing, even though it has a stiff, formal, military tone. In fact, if you look up the word, you'll often see that the first definition listed is related to its use in the military: "A military objective is a clearly defined desired result in a given campaign, major operation, battle, or engagement set by the senior command for their formations and units to achieve." This is no surprise, as many researchers say the first real marketing began after World War II, when governments used PR and marketing as propaganda and as promotional tools for their education and health programs.
Whether you're in the military or not, objectives help take your goals to the next level and put something in place to help you measure the effectiveness of your marketing. If you give your goal a little more meat so it's clear, measurable, and has a due date, you can better evaluate your results. Here's my simple definition of an objective: what you're specifically going to do to reach your goal by a deadline.
For example, you can set a fitness goal of "getting in shape," but it will be hard to gauge your results on the scale or in inches — and know when to do the actual measuring — if you don't add some clarifying details. You'll be much more successful in reaching that goal if you say something along the lines of, "I want to lose 10 pounds and go down at least one clothing size in the next three months, starting tomorrow." See what I mean? Now that's something you can get your arms around, start working toward, and measure — literally.
SMART OBJECTIVES
A well-known tool a lot of people use to help them convert a broad goal into a more defined action step is called a SMART objective. SMART is an acronym that George T. Doran developed in the 1980s. He was the former director of corporate planning for Washington Water Power Company in Spokane, Washington, and came up with the acronym to help people remember the criteria that go into a crystal-clear objective:
Specific: Be sure your objective is as precise and detailed as possible, and details exactly what needs to get done.
Measurable: Come up with a quantifiable number tied to what you need to do so you can determine if you made progress or not.
Assignable: Make sure you assign a name and owner to the task so you know who, if not you, is going to get the work done.
Realistic: Do you have the time, money, and other resources needed to get the task accomplished?
Time-related: Give yourself a deadline for when the project needs to be completed.
To better understand how you can convert a goal into a SMART objective, I want you to refer back to Tamika's goal of successfully opening iChelle's first location. This sounds great, but how does she take the first step toward making it happen? Should she start by building a potential customer mailing list? Create a Facebook page? Let her local media outlets and bloggers know the store is about to open?
Instead of trying to guess what to do next, Tamika took time up front to outline several SMART objectives for her company. This ensures that her marketing will be much more strategic and effective in moving her business forward in the direction she needs it to go.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Propel"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Whitney Keyes.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword Maggie Winkel, Director of Merchandising, Nike, Inc. 13
Introduction 17
Part I STRATEGY-Set Your Course for Success 31
Chapter 1 Pick Your Priorities 33
Chapter 2 Map the Landscape 49
Part II STORY-Connect With the People Who Matter Most 65
Chapter 3 Build Your Brand 67
Chapter 4 Find Your Market 81
Part III STRENGTH-Boost Your Efforts by Extending Your Reach 97
Chapter 5 Leverage Your Customers 99
Chapter 6 Form Powerful Partnerships 117
Chapter 7 Amplify Through Media and Opinion Influences 133
Part IV SIMPLICITY-Keep the Plan and Process Straightforward 151
Chapter 8 Create an Action Plan 153
Chapter 9 Start Small and Grow Tall 167
Part V SPEED-Accelerate and Move Forward 185
Chapter 10 Get Results-Fast 187
Conclusion: Keep Your Momentum 207
Notes 209
Index 215
About the Author 221