I wake up with possibilities each day. I am passionate about making entrepreneurs and brands succeed in their efforts despite the economy. Money is not available to do everything we want to do. If I am correct there has never been anytime when money goes round to do all that human desire to accomplish. The peculiarity of now is that budget has become tighter than before for most brands. The banking reform in our country is not helping matter presently. Banks are no longer granting loans as before. Many brands now improvise on what they have. For many brands today, most jobs that were   contracted out before are now being handled by internal audience. These have all affected flow of cash to big agencies that used to handle those jobs.

The reason above is telling on small scale as well as medium scale brands. The only option to reach clients now with zero or little cost is through engagement marketing. Engagement marketing offers a great platform to brands because it involves dialogue and sustained relationship building. When this is properly done the buyers help you drive the brand in a way that your brand’s huge budget can never have achieved. Engagement marketing helps brands to stay at the competitive edge of creating dialogue and solid relationship with potentials as well as actual.

According to a whitepaper by Silverpop, engagement marketing offers  new landscape of marketing channels on a one-one relationship( that is powered through the web) and allows, empowers clients to participate in a brand’s marketing messages. To excel in engagement marketing, the followings need to be in place

Brands must worth listening to: the attention span today is about nine seconds instead of sixty. So brands need to first work hard to get the attention of the prospect in today’s hyper active, internet based communications tools and trends. Too many things are clamouring for clients’ attention online. Each brand is competing for that customer’s attention. What will help your brand is the level of your brand’s credibility

Sound Strategy and tactics:  getting their attentions is not enough today. The joy and euphoria may lead to inertia that will make you forget the purpose of getting the attention in the first instance. So efforts must be made to engage them in taking a positive action that will lead to achievement of your brand’s goal. Opportunities to be known for their efforts, contributions to your brand’s success must be included in your strategies too. Otherwise they will feel used for a selfish brand’s ambition.

Place value on long-lasting relationship: never forget that relationship is the bedrock of every business today. Engagement marketing will be based on mutually beneficial relationships between those who help you promote your brands and the brand itself. Your internal audience must be trained to value your stakeholders’ effort so that they do not soil the relationship along the line. Consider customer life time value before you over react to simple misdeed. What do you think? Use the comment section.

When it all started, very few people gave this baby, new trend a chance of survival. There were one thousand and one reasons why people thought it could not survive. The low level of infrastructure, cost of access to Internet was not within the reach of average person on the street. But few of us saw the possibilities of universally connected people, communities and brands that shared opinions and exchanged pleasantries as friends.

 After five years of sticking to it and advocating the possibility of a new world where the voices of the voiceless, so called underdogs who could not afford the cost of putting their opinions on the pages of the regular media now have a new found love, opportunities in the social media platforms. The advent of social media is premised on the need to communicate, share opinion in an environment that encourages cordiality and relationship building.

 Aside from the major platforms like facebook, home-grown platform like Nairaland is becoming a strong platform for bonding with different sections created for auto sales and expression of opinions on various national issues. Over the years, the dynamics of social media appreciation is changing. The level of awareness is increasing especially since the beginning of the year. As our  nation gradually moves towards developing strategy that will move us out of the recession, brand custodians are looking out for ways to cut cost and their eyeballs seem to be strolling towards social media.

 Though what we noticed is that many are yet to take a decisive action in learning the rudiments or establishing social media position in their organizations. While we keep up the advocacy, there seems to be encouraging news that there is a silent crave to know more among the youths and middle age people. At least, the acquisition rate of Nigerians into facebook is presently put at ten thousand every two days. If that continues, we will have millions online in the next few months. This is a great opportunity for brands that know what to do. They may need to learn as much as they can to take advantage of the vast potentials. At the beginning of rebranding exercise led by Prof. Akunyili, I noticed they were not using social media and I have once discussed that on this platform. After an intimate discussion with one of the technocrats invited to craft the rebranding document, I learnt  that it was part of what was submitted but never executed.

 When there is a will there is a way, we woke up this morning with a newspaper report that the President- Dr Goodluck Jonathan promised to open a facebook account to reach Nigerian youths, and it will be a channel to get feedback on electoral reform that is ongoing. That is breakthrough. At least it has started to gain national recognition, awareness and application. It is our prayer that right people will be given right assignment. At our own level, we have noticed the demand for more knowledge on social media surged after our national conference on social media and brand positioning in February 2010. Even though we have also stepped up advocacy in reaching more professionals and individuals as we have the capacity. I have enjoyed various forms of interviews from regular media and we just hope this will continue in the months to come.

 One of the challenges I have also noticed is the fears associated with social media. Many still believe it exposes people to a lot of risk, wastes management time (because of its addictive nature), but all these could be put in proper shape when objective is defined and standards are set in place. One of the greatest challenges to social media application in Nigeria is lack of verifiable data that will support decision making process on whether to use them or not to. I was at a television programme last Saturday where the anchor was insinuating we have two million members on Facebook. As far as we are concerned that is a controversial figure, what we are working with presently as professionals is one million two hundred. So if experts do not agree on figures, how can we convince clients? That is why we are working on having a verifiable data that can help decision making process for users. Around the world, people, management and decision makers have access to such data. This project will be packaged in E-book form and free of download for anyone around the world. This project is opened to sponsorship to any corporate organization that wants to take the advantage of visibility, brand awareness, equity that is often associated with such publications.

 Promo:

 To enhance our community’s knowledge on social media and how it affects business goal, we are planning  a day intensive seminar with the title: Social media and business goal’. It hopes to expose practical, useful ways of using social media to personal and corporate advantage. The facilitators are seasoned experts who have gained varied experience. Dayo Adefila(Head, Strategy and planning at Insight Grey) is an experienced creative , Brand, digital marketing and communication expert; Azubuike ishiekwene , a former director in punch Newspaper will be speaking on finding the confluence between regular and social media for business goal, kingsley Obom- Egbulem-CCO of HCDI and Serenade communications will help to expose trends in corporate communications, marketing while i will also be speaking on other issues. This event comes up June 15, 2010 and cost only twenty five thousand to participate.

To say we live in changing times is an understatement. Each new day brings its own uniqueness. what used to be hot yesterday is no longer so. Marketing strategy of last century may no longer be tenable. What we have noticed is that some still want to stick to the old way of doing things.Today, marketing trends are going the way of conversation and engagement. The old four Ps are obsolete.It is now mandatory for marketer that will command respect to understand what it takes to play in the game of marketing today. 

So for any marketer who want to know the way out or where the ball is going, I think Chad levi’s advice could do. while Chad did concentrate on the effect of the followings on personal branding, I do think brand marketers can also learn from the following strategies.

Producers: a marketer that will apply this strategy must be ready to create, develop and supply contents in any formats that will work for his audience. These contents can be in form of text(blog), podcast, videoblog etc. the aim of producing these contents is basically to help audience get better understanding of his products. Even before the product is out a producers can co create a product with his audience. With this strategy, it is easier for the product or services in question to enjoy word of mouth marketing as soon as it comes to the marketing. The snag here is that this strategy requires hard work of finding out as well as giving out without measure relevant material that will enhance audience perception of the product ands services.  

Commentator: This strategy can also be used as another form of marketing of gaining eyeball, visibility and understanding. For a commentator strategy to work, marketer must be on the look out and monitor trends both online and offline and be ready to comment positively and meanigfully to discussions around his services or products.

Gatherer: This strategy works as the marketers decide to gather as much informed opinion around his services, products or trends that will allow the making of informed decisions about best practices and what we will.

Joiner: this marketing strategy today is assocaited with marketer who just want to join relevant community and possibly become part of it. many often remain inactive but being active positions individual than otherwise.

Observer: observer strategy may or may not work depend on how the strategist goes by it. Most observer’s strategy is to maintain a sit down and look for ages. When this becomes a permanent approach it does not produce much result.

Having said these what are your marketing strategies? Do you think the above will work today? Let me hear from you.

 Prior to the first tsunami in Asia, tsunami is just a word in the dictionary. Most people did not know what the word stands for, how it operates. All of us could not imagine the huge impact an occurrence can have on humanity. This was followed by ‘Hurricane Katrina’ which was the USA version under George Bush.

Since the second outbreak, wise nations have trained experts and put structures in place to forestall further outbreak or minimize its effects. There are lots of ‘tsunamis’ happening right in front us today within marketing communications industry. The level of disruption has caught many brands unaware.

Even when there is clear sign of changes, many brands are still assuming that marketing tsunami does not concern them or will never change the dynamics of the trade. I can not but laugh out loud. Joe Puzilli has once said ‘we are seeing nothing less than a tsunami affecting business of every size, regardless of what they are selling’. Instead of readjusting their contact lenses in order to see well, Many brands will rather pretend it will not affect them. Many brands are still complaining that technology has brought a lot of damage to their business/sales- especially traditional media.

What they have failed to realize is that every disadvantage carries with it a correspondence opportunity. Technology has opened more doors of opportunities to every brand than the ones closed. It I just that they have not taken time to study the parameters of the tsunami. Over concentration on old patterns of news coverage, marketing will not allow traditional media brands to see untold numbers of opportunities to increase revenue despite the influence of social media on their trade.

Also some personal brands will rather continue with ‘resume posting’, looking for jobs on the job boards than building a strong personal, networking, global brand positioning through solid, creative online presence. We are in a stage where marketing tsunami is still changing the dynamics of operation. Wise brands have realized this and are adapting. The new brand marketing trend demands that each brand build strong connection with its consumer instead of talking at them.

The new marketing also demands that brands elevate their consumers from just an acquaintance to good bed fellow/passionate lovers. Brands needs to get over the initial shock of this marketing tsunami disruptions of old patterns and move on with the present demands. The advent of brand marketing tsunami began about a decade and half ago but its effects became pronounced in the last decade and it is not likely to end until its disrupt the old pattern.

Anyway that is my view. A wise brand should make available fund for social media whether it is hundred years old or a start up. Robert Kiyosaki was quoted last year as saying ‘I am a bit old to focus on social media now but I spend an average of two hundred thousand dollars monthly through hired employees or consultants on social media, online reputation etc’.

Today a five minute ad, a five page ad in the Dailies may not create a meaningful relationship with customers. Meanwhile they still need to be part of brands’ communication tools/plans.

In my bid to up my knowledge so I can be of more value to my community, I began a research on necessity of internal/employee branding. It s not  a case that I did not know how vital internal branding is to corporate branding before, but the fact remains that knowledge changes and to be relevant you need to upscale what you know today to be relevant tomorrow. In the course of my research, I stumbled on a research paper by Dr. Harquail and his research paper will form part of my discourse today.

Internal branding is the engine room of any corporate brand. Internal branding strengthens a corporate organization’s position in a competitive market place as well as enhance organization’s effectiveness.   Internal branding is highly essential because like every other branding strategy, internal brand is a form of an attempt to gain further control of niche through shaping internal audience identities. The essence of internal branding is to help employee internalize and truly represent the brand identity desired by corporate brand. It is also aimed at adequately projecting the brand to the customers and other corporate brand’s constituency members. Employee branding helps employee to develop and direct self-images that are in congruent with attributes of the brands they work for. The goal of employee branding is to induce internal branding to create a behavioral and psychological connection between themselves and the brand identity. Without proper internalizing of brand’s idea, concept, it will be difficult for employees to become brand ambassadors for any brand. Expectedly a branded employee is deemed to have the ability to truly represents, projects the corporate brand’s identity through his personal behaviors, appearances while relating with any brand constituent. Work environment has been discovered to aid or mar the effectiveness of internal branding. The management style of the executives, the support and kind of attention they receive from management, management attitudes are some of the thing that will project the level at which internal branding efficiency will be. The level of effectiveness of any internal branding efforts can be greatly marred by executives’ personal attitude and commitment to the success of the corporate brand as a whole. A corporate brand gains better visibility and achieve objectives faster when internal brands behaviors strengthen brand identity as well as promise.

To help achieve better internal branding, management needs to teach ,coach employee about the brand’s identity ,promise of value, expectation, make them understand how to represent the brand in their daily attitudes, offer them opportunity to represent the brand and a continual support to be the best they could be for themselves as well as the corporate brand. A corporate brand that frustrates personal innovation may not get the best of internal branding efforts. There is more to offer in terms of processes and management. Hope to write further next time

Is your employee properly branded?

In the course of dealings with individuals in the area of personal and executive branding, I have noticed a flow of thought prevalent among many. People need a quick fix it answers. A tip of a sort. A wheel that one can swing in minutes and get result. My response to that is that there is nothing like overnight success. Every overnight success takes nights to birth. No half-hearted effort can supply great results. I draw a parallel that even HIV does not become a full blown AIDS in a day.

So if an individual really mean to promote his/her personal brand and excel in this, the followings will be worth considering.

1. Distribute value: do you have a unique value, plan to distribute this as much as possible. Never odd the value that you have. Personal branding is not all about you. It is about others who buy your unique value.

2. Focus your skills and promote yourself as a go-to-person: Do not sow your skills in a haphazard manner. Be versatile and yet focused. When you over-stretched yourself in different directions, there is a possibility of brand position coloring and people will not know where you actually belong.

3. Treat your brand like a corporate brand: You may not be Nike, chevron, Oando, Cadbury, but find out what they are doing ethically and apply most of these principles to your personal brand.

4. To be remembered, be noteworthy: Many voices are out there trying to impress others. Identify your uniqueness and manifest this in your own way that will make people remember you. Manage the impression well also.

5. Get a personal website/url: No brand can be out rightly successful without a web presence today. A local brand can in some cases though. Take your brand to the global arena. Go to the village square. The World Wide Web is now the new village square.

6. Record positive events, interactions, feedbacks: Some may feel this is arrogance when they document their achievements for others to see. That is also equal to arrogance to some. There is no evil in this if you know how to do it well without attracting negative comments.

7. Measure and implement: constantly measure your personal results, get feedbacks and act on them no matter how much of your ego is affected

Every personal brand has greater potential force of reckoning than we all acknowledged. Each given personal brand has innate capability to impact the thoughts, deeds and actions of those around us. Interestingly, when we do our parts, the law of psychological reciprocity which states “human beings are instinctively impelled to return to others the feelings and emotions they give us” work in our favour. This is where brand’s effectiveness, influence and rewards come from. This begins with being ready to serve.

The statement above calls for deliberate action on the part of the individual personal brand to strengthen the position of its own brand. This ensures the brand garners much gain and influence within the target market. There are three noted avenues that personal brand can use to strengthen the brand and that formed the focus of our discussion today.

1. Listen: listening is an effective tool in communication. Those who keep speaking without listening never learn anything news and as time goes on they lose credibility, followership and attention. They are associated with a notion of always wanting to dominate, lack of concern to others’ feelings. Listening involves seeking to clearly understand what others are saying and how they are feelings. When a brand does this, it solidifies its relationship more with the target and the brand gained more attention in the process.

2. Awareness: This has to do with brand’s ability to empathize, being in tune with itself as well as those around it. A step further is an attempt to always understand who you are becoming and the necessary sacrifice that needed to be made for your future that will add values to the target audience too.

3. Healing: The society is hurting. Your niche is inclusive. Thanks for being a great brand evangelist, but your brand achieve more when it becomes a healer, solving problem by removing hindrances, discovering better way that can make life better for the niche. There are ways to do this; we will discus this in the nearest future. Do you have experience here? Share yours with our community.

As the battle ground begins to shift from traditional mainstream mass media to digital media, the fierceness of the battle will soon be felt more on the cyberspace because customers now have a say. It is wise for brands to develop a strategy on how to play the game according to the rule. I must admit as I commented on a forum recently that in our environment here, the battle is more pronounced in the mass media broadcast advertisement than in the digital media. But soon, as we have in advanced countries, the scope of the marketing channel will change for good.

Brand engagement marketing will become the answer to the above. It will create avenues, privileges, rights to enhance marketing effectiveness to a new elevated level. Brand engagement marketing will mop up the merits in online social phenomenon available through dialogues, forums, blogs, vblogging, podcast, YouTube. This requires adequate training and know-how though.

As a form of digression, I want to point out that the re-branding of Nigeria project can annex this opportunity. There are a whole lot of opportunities to gain here. Brand marketers who are not versed in this new phenomenon will not be able to offer much value to the brand. I do think every employee should be brand’s marketer at a various degree. A guru has noted  ‘a brand has two major functions: innovation and marketing- every other activity is cost’.  For Brands- personal, corporate, service, product, national- to be successful brand engagement marketing should be the backbone of the brand’s savvy marketing activities. This is because brand engagement marketing permits the marketers to establish a virile, vibrant brand and create loyal users, fans with upward revenue drive for ROI on marketing.

In a recent research publication by Silverpop, they define “Engagement Marketing” as ‘a marketing approach which -is in contrast to traditional brand and direct marketing strategies- allows a brand customers and prospects to shape the company’s marketing…this start when someone takes an action and initiates a dialogue in requesting information about the brand’.

The foundation as I want to believe is brand’s internal brands, personal brands and by extension visuals like websites, emails, product packaging which through their activities affect point of contacts perception. My submission is that brand engagement begins with every internal brand though the responsibilities may be heavier on marketing, brand management, corporate communication department.

Personal assitant/Executive Assistant evolved over the years as result of pressure on senior executive and the need to have someone who can help them solves other important details that they may not have time for. At the beginning, what is today called Executive/Personal  assiatnt is called Confidential secretary among other names.The role they played then was to help type document, keep some documents secret, manage people and the bosses’ itinerary. As time progresses, the role of a Personal Personal Assistant/Executive changed with greater demand for knowledges of activities like scheduling, task and project managements among others. Greater qualifications are now being demanded from an individual who want to fill this role. As long as we still still have executives, the job will remain but at a greater degree. It takes a choice person to get the best in this job. Particularly with the advent of Persaonal digital assiatants/phones. It is easier for executives to schedule their meetings with the assitant of a PDA now. So if all an individual knows is just scheduling, his job is already on the line.This has informed the need to have a strong personal brand as a differentiating factor.So lets examine what counts for a Personal Assistant.

1.Trust,High Integrity: Because a Personal Assistant will have access to clasified information of the senior executive, it is important that the brand You of a personal assistant have a greater dose of Trust. Once again, trust is relaibility and Dependability. If this social capital account is in red, the PA is already out of the job.

2.Excellent People management skill: The role of executive assistant is like the role of chief-of-staff.He must know how to manage internal staff as well as external audience well. Many will insist on seeing the executive because they were old classmates before meanwhile they may not have an appointment. Ability to be diplomatic with such people is important. Many may even claim you are hoarding the executive.

3.Social intelligence: this has become the greatest intelligence that is now required today.Senior executive always attend parties, functions, get together among others. Part of the job duties of PA is to accompany the executive, manage the event to the advantage of the executive so that the image of the executive does not become dented; social intelligience, public relations skill will be required to handle all these so get it by all means.

4.Presence: this has to do with dress sense. Working with top executive demands that you dress for the office. Even if you do not like glamorous lifestyle, your jobs demands that you dress for the position. But if I may add caution here for ladies in this profession, avoid dressing to kill, you will end up in many beds or you may lose the job if you mainatain a ‘no’ stance. One can dress well without unnecessary exposure.Get wisdom to know what is right.

5.Computer skill, correspondence management: For some, their jobs will require preparing presentations for their bossess, this is where a great knowledge of computer skills and corresspondence management will work for your brand. Being a ‘pro’ in managing meetins, organizing will be good for your brand.

6.Constituency relations: The executive always have large constituency. Personal assistants must be able to screen information, liason with several associations, units.

#The other points will be featured in my soon to be released free e-book “Personal Branding For First class Professionals”.

We have established that sitting on the fence when it comes to conversation marketing today is dangerous. It is like taking a position in the middle of a highway road. I do understand that for some, it appears we are speaking a foreign language with all the terms we are using here such as web 2.0, conversation marketing etc. because of these set of people, I hereby give my opinion and what those terms translate to in a lay man’s language as well as make open what the rules of the game are. Like we have established, conversational marketing takes place on the web. Interestingly the web has moved from web 1.0 for beginners to web 2.0. To add insult to injury for many, web 3.0 is around the corner in the western world. This requires that those of us here must quickly update our knowledge as fast as possible so we can play in the big league. I must say I am not a web savvy individual neither do I study science related course in the university, my passion is only on how brands can take advantages made available to harness visibility and relevance. This I have being doing in the past three years before I start talking about it today. Not to worry, individuals out there will not need three years period to learn, all you need do is to closely follow issues here and drop comment if you do not understand anything. So to be a player in this game, take note of the following as brand owner or a brand.

1. Have basic knowledge of the internet: You do not need to be a guru. I am not one. There are things I wish I know that I do not know.

2. Understand your brand, business and its users.

3. Be keenly interested in your niche and listen to the conversation going on around the world.

4. Develop a strategy to partake. This will help you to measure results.

5. Delegate responsibility: you either get involve –personal brand, or delegate responsibility as corporate brand owner. Get a social media consultant or community manager as it is called now. If you can not get any, send your people to us for training. It pays greater dividends.

6. Utilize integrated social media method: There are great numbers out there i.e. forums, social network, ding, discussion group, blogs. These require adequate training to get best results.

 On the last note, do not enter conversation as a marketer delivering a sales pitch, it will boomerang. People do not like to be sold to. Learn to respect privacy terms too.