Research, branding and reboots … The latest version of our own Pick Six (for six glorious years in business, natch …) finds us walking our own proverbial yellow brick road in search of marketing nirvana.

We always say (but it bears repeating), marketing is more art than science. Finding the perfect mix of marketing strategy and tactics that will deliver the biggest impact for clients is never a one size fits all exercise – it’s a bit of a journey! And we have to admit … we absolutely love the journey.

Research, branding and reboots, oh my!

Enjoy these exciting and fulfilling stops along the way:

1. Research and Branding – The research and brand architecture exercise that we are undergoing with Mister Sweeper gives us serious back to basics euphoria! We live for this stuff, friends.
2. Newsletter Refresh and Reboot – We love giving a long-standing client a refresh, and the end result is fantastic! Check out the latest Corps Team Client newsletter. Phenomenal!
3. Blogging – We can’t say enough about blogging and the importance of it in your content strategy. Blogs we love include, but aren’t limited to, The GEM, TodoModo Group, PeopleResults and Feizy.
4. Learning – The Chief Rocker’s association with Vistage continues to be an invaluable one. Lots of great ideas were shared recently by Communications Specialist Michael Allosso, who was the guest speaker at a business owner’s event.
5. Team Straight Talk – Even when our Rockers aren’t delivering the skinny ON the Porch, they are telling it like it is OFF the Porch. Check out Tara (aka The Rock) in The Dallas Morning News.
6. New Connections – We love that our clients and friends spread the word on our behalf! Meeting with new people and prospects to see if we can help is always a charge.

Thanks for walking our yellow brick road with us, friends! We continue to be thankful for each and every one of you.

Join us elsewhere if you want jams: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn!

Truth be told, my favorite diamond comes with four bases and a mound. I am always sad when another season of spring baseball is over. With each and every season, lessons and opportunities to grow on and off the field present themselves. Here were our top lessons learned this season:

1. It’s Not Over Until the Last Out – A team in my eldest son’s division had just an “ok” performance in regular season, but took everyone by surprise when they won the championship game. When you talked to the coaches, they credited their success to playing to their strengths, staying positive, never giving up, practicing and sticking to their playbook. Applying strategy and putting in the work paid off for this team.
2. An Ounce of Encouragement Wins Every Time – One of our players was on the receiving end of a lot of negativity from the coaches and teammates. Changing the narrative to encouragement and positive reinforcement instantly improved his play! Inclusion, encouragement and positive reinforcement are game changers. He ended the season by saying it was the best one yet and he didn’t want it to end. Actions and words have tremendous power. Make a difference with both!
3. Know the Rules – Seems to be an obvious statement, but knowing the rules is always important – in business, sports, home and school. Know the rules and play by them. We had teams check us (bat sizes, mound distance, etc.) and, if we had not been following the rules, this might have been an issue. An opposing team jumbled their line-up and it resulted in two automatic outs … they ended up losing the game; and while one can never say for certain, that situation appeared to be the momentum changer.
4. Embrace the Fail – Baseball is a game designed for you to fail. I love that simple fact. Every play there is one win and one fail. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on every player; but if applied correctly, it can result in lifelong lesson. It’s not if you fail, it is how you recover from the failure. So you strike out … what happens next? You hit a two-run homer. Fail. Learn. Progress. On repeat.

We love baseball. It connects our family. We invest our time together because of the lessons learned on and off the field. These lessons are easily adapted into business and life.

What’s your business’ game plan? How can we help you win? Let’s play ball!

Today, social media is a huge part of people’s daily lives. It is used as a way to communicate, keep up with family and friends, see what’s happening around the world and network virtually with business connections that we may not have the opportunity to meet in person.

Social media is such a major component of people’s personal lives. It should be a sure sign for small businesses that a social media presence is an absolute must to build and grow. It is a way for businesses to interact directly with current customers. It is also a way to reach potential customers.

These days, consumers and clients want to engage with businesses through social media and expect businesses to be present on multiple networks. The key to using it successfully is choosing the right networks and consistently updating content. With all the platforms that exist today, the big question for small businesses is, “Which networks are right for my business?”

At Front Porch Marketing, we are big proponents of social media. It is the foundation of almost every marketing plan we create.

Some of our favorite social media networks on the Porch:

• Instagram – for sharing visual content
• LinkedIn – for B2B companies
• Facebook – presents a huge opportunity for consumer engagement
• Twitter – allows businesses to keep on top of what is being said about their industry and stay ahead of the competition

What small businesses have to do is figure out which networks are the right fit for their company based on their target audience. Each reaches a different set of demographics. Once the right networks are defined, it’s critical to share content and interact with customers in a timely and consistent manner. This creates an awesome experience for the customer and any potential customers who may be watching.

If you are looking to establish, expand or evaluate your social media presence, we can help!

Here on the Porch, social media marketing is king. A strong social media plan is key to a healthy, robust presence on-line – which in turn leads to increased brand recognition, increased brand loyalty, more traffic, and ultimately more customers.

Using social media to grow your business can seem like a daunting task. But it needn’t be! Here are our 6 top tips for developing a strong social media presence:

• Have A Social Media Plan for Each Channel. Please people, don’t just create one type of content and blast it across every social platform! Identify your audience and your goals for each platform – they are very different creatures. Ensure your posts are true to your brand and strike the tone you wish to convey. Develop a calendar and stick to it.

• Create Meaningful Content and Deliver it Consistently. Quality content that excites and engages is worth its weight in gold. Make sure everything you post is valuable, relevant to your audience, helpful, and/or entertaining. And get it out there consistently!

• The Key Word in Social Media is Social – Interact! Engaging with other users on a regular basis is key. Like people’s posts. When people comment, reply! Comment on other people’s posts. Retweet. Give people a shout out! Encourage communication and conversation.

• Optimize Your Content with Visuals and Links. Visuals grab people’s attention, so don’t neglect this important piece of the puzzle. Photos, infographics, memes, videos – all valuable tools. Mix it up. Then don’t forget to drive traffic back to your site! Always link back to your products and services.

• Blog, Blog, Blog. We can’t stress this enough. Develop blog posts that are easy to read,  highlighting ideas that are interesting and thought-provoking. Creating original content in the form of blogs is a win-win! Don’t become overwhelmed, blogs don’t have to be long. Just do it!

• Get Your Entire Team In On the Action. Everyone has a valuable point of view and cache of experience, so encourage everyone to help your marketing efforts. Get them to blog and share their expertise. At the bare mimimum, ask them to follow and comment on the social profiles of your company and your clients.

We always say, marketing is more of an art than a science, and that is true! Take the human approach when developing your social media strategy – it will pay dividends!

It’s been a rockin’ year at Front Porch Marketing and for our blog, Off Our Rocker. 

Our team shares their musings, wisdom and counsel about branding, marketing, trends, pop culture, being a working mother and motherhood in general here.

We love to blog for clients, our team members, advocates and ourselves and have decided to countdown and share with you the five most-read blog posts for 2016.

We would love for you to look back and read them again or maybe read them for the first time.

So, we will leave you with these.

Happy almost New Year.

No. 5 Blog

Motivation: 5 Ways to Find It When You’ve Hit a Wall, by Ann Marie Bishop

No. 4

Do Your Actions Speak Louder than Likes?, by Darcey Newsum

No. 3

4 Lessons Learned By Losing, by Vanessa Hickman

No. 2

5 Rockin’ Things About Branding & Marketing Businesses, by Julie Porter

No. 1

Being a Working Mom: Five Things That Saved Me This Summer, by Jacqui Chappell

Your brand is one of the most important parts of developing or reinvigorating your company. The process of branding examines the emotions you want your customer to feel about your company and its services.

Branding means different things to different people. When working with Clients, we on the Porch serve it up this way:

Simply put, your brand is your promise to your customer.

One of the steps in our branding elaborative is defining brand affiliation. This is done after the vision, personality and positioning are established, because all these factor into the affiliation.

Brand affiliation is best described as what “club” customers are joining when they choose your company. Humans are compelled to affiliate with people like themselves, people they admire or people they aspire to be like. Brand affiliation is what you want other people to think of your company when they learn they are aligned with you.

Once your affiliation is established, you can position yourself in environments that share your affiliation. Say what?

Depending on your company, that might be more complicated than it seems. Here’s an example from our very own Porch:

We want to work with forward-thinking, passionate business leaders and entrepreneurs. We want everyone to have a knock-your-socks off, head turning, register-ringing marketing strategy!

So how do we do that, and maximize our affiliation?

1. We live, breathe and sing marketing strategy and insight with anyone that will join us on the Porch.
2. We provide marketing implementation.
3. We align ourselves with groups and organizations like Vistage, WBENC, NEW, Community Partners and liked-minded business owners.
4. We conduct workshops like our Chief Rocker’s November 4, “Business in a Box” workshop at the Arlington Inspired Women Luncheon.

Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be. Define it and Rock It. Every Day. All Day.

Stinky Pepper Boy.

Not a very nice name to be called in third grade.

On the first day of school my oldest came home and said he was done with peppers. No big deal … until I found out why.  He was being teased about his lunch. Why would kids pick on another kid about his food? Well first and foremost they are kids, but secondly, like all consumers big or small, we fear and sometimes even mock the unknown.

After a couple of days, I proposed the sweet pepper ‘marketing 101 campaign’ to my son, and he was all in! “Mom, once they try them, they will love them!” Game on!

Our Marketing 101 Campaign consisted of Four Proven Marketing Tactics:
1. Awareness
2. Engagement
3. CTA – Call to Action
4. Trial

Awareness: A platter of peppers was brought to the lunch room and a short introduction that included the health benefits, what they tasted like, the different colors/options was given. All the benefits can be found here. The kids had the knowledge (awareness) that peppers promoted healthy skin, hair, vision and immune system.

Engagement: The kids were interested … some had tried the peppers, some never had because they thought the peppers were spicy, but when they heard the name ‘sweet mini peppers’ they were engaged. Everybody likes something sweet.

CTA: This year our school started composting. Four days into the year some had not visited the compost bin, which was a coveted trip AND the CTA! The stem was compost worthy and earned a trip for all that tried.

Trial: The lure of the compost trip gave us what we needed. They. All. Tried. A. Pepper. Trial was the key to winning them over.

Of course, not all the little consumers were converted – there were a handful of pepper holdouts. But many really liked them, resulting in requests for seconds!  To my son’s joy they started chanting … Pep-pers … Pep-pers … Pep-pers. 

Everyone sells, in one way or another. As parents, we sell our children on our belief systems, values, and desired behavior. As business owners, we sell our products and services. Following a few proven marketing tactics can convert even the most discriminating customer.

And what of our Stinky Pepper Boy? After our successful venture, as I was walking out the door, my son ran across room, threw his arms around me and whispered “thank you.” And he has been packing peppers for lunch ever since.

Over the last week, I sat down to write this blog at my desk, Starbucks, the library and various other locations, opened my computer and a fresh new Word document … only to hit a blank wall. A very blank wall. I could blame my lack of motivation and inspiration on my lack of sleep due to my toddler’s current sleep regression, or the added stresses now that summer is over, or my ever growing to-do list that just seems to keep getting longer, or a number of life’s other distractors. BUT, in all reality, it’s always something, isn’t it?

And I know I’m not the only one. 

With my deadline looming, I realized that my motivation wasn’t going to just come to me… I had to find it. And ironically, my lack of inspiration turned into my inspiration! Here are some of the ways I overcome creative blocks and tackle tasks that sometimes seem impossible to get done:

1. Focus – Set aside time, sit down and FOCUS. Turn your phone off (or if you need to be reached in case of emergency, turn it on vibrate and turn it upside down), turn off your email and step away from social media and the internet black hole! Hold yourself accountable for that one hour – or however long you need to get started – make the necessary progress, and finish the project.

2. Make the Extra Time – It’s not ideal to work outside of your regular work hours, and it’s important to unplug for personal and family time. But sometimes, you just have to invest the extra time to meet your deadline. Whether it’s waking up early, eating lunch at your desk, or sitting back down at your computer in the evening after you’ve had dinner and a chance to unwind. Personally, that’s one of my favorite times because my creative juices really flow with a glass of wine!

3. Change Your Environment – Working at Starbucks provides energy that can be contagious, but at times it can be too loud for me to concentrate. The library is a great place to go to find a nook and hunker down, but it can also be too quiet. Depending on your project, find a place that will fuel your inspiration.

4. Step Away – Even with a deadline looming, it’s important to step away (but NOT during your set aside time mentioned in #1). If you’re like me, sometimes you return to find that your work is even better that you thought! And, other times, you return to find it’s terrible. Either way, you’ll be in a better place.

5. Just Do It! – Procrastination is not a good habit, and I don’t recommend it. But, at times, it’s necessary and even beneficial. There’s something to the saying “Nothing makes a person more productive than waiting until the last minute.” If the last minute is all you have, just make it count!

There! I did it! Motivation found. Now, what’s next on my list?

Can you speak more than one language? Being bilingual has never been as important as it is today.

There are, of course, many superficial perks of being bilingual. Chatting up any person you meet when traveling abroad, expanding your world view when watching the news in a different language, or being able to add the phrase “speaks two languages” to your resume, are all wonderful experiences.

But make no mistake about it, being bilingual is a great asset for any professional. Business is no longer confined to U.S. boundaries, and bilingual individuals are in greater demand than ever before.

Here are 4 advantages to being bilingual that may make you reconsider learning a second language:

1. It helps keep your brain active
Did you know that individuals who are bilingual generally have a more flexible and active brain than those who only speak one language? This is due to the fact that they are frequently switching between two language systems.

Bilingual individuals also have an easier time:

• Developing strong thinking skills
• Using logic
• Focusing, remembering and making decisions
• Learning other languages

2. It helps you learn more efficiently
The learning advantages that come with growing up learning two languages is especially seen in children’s ability to think through problems. This is because they can switch between languages, are more sensitive to language, and have a better ear for listening. The ability to read and think in different languages promotes higher levels of abstract thought as well, which is an extremely important skill children carry into adulthood.

3. It makes you more “worldly”
One-half to two-thirds of adults around the world speak at least two languages. This seems like a high number, doesn’t it? Well the majority of these people don’t live in the United States. Generally bilingual adults have more advantages around the world than monolingual adults. They are also presented with more opportunities to participate in the global community, retrieve information from more places, and learn more about people from other cultures.

4. It keeps your brain sharp
Believe it or not, various studies have shown that individuals with a higher level of bilingualism were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Esto es bastante guay, ¿sí? This is because both languages are continually active, even if only one is being used. Bilingualism has positive effects on the other end of the spectrum as well … bilingual children as young as seven months can better adjust to environmental changes.

Have you reconsidered picking up a second language yet?