Our oldest son plays baseball in the North Arlington Little League. Last year, his team, the Pirates, had an undefeated season and won the championship game. Of course, we celebrated the win.

Players moved up and on, but we returned for another season. It started out smoothly enough – the games were competitive, but the team was winning. Then we had a tied game. Then we lost.

No big deal, right?

Wrong.

We celebrated the wins, we worked for the wins, we appreciated the wins. However, we neglected to prepare for the possibility of a loss. For two years, the team was coached and played to win. We should have also been coached and prepared to lose.

There is value in the lessons we learn from losing and sports give us a good arena to teach these lessons to our children.

These are valuable lessons that can be applied in parenting, business and life:

• Respect.
  For every winner, there is a loser. You have to respect both. Period. Respect your team, respect the other team. Act accordingly.
• Resiliency.
  It’s ok to be disappointed or upset after a loss. But the quicker you put a loss behind you, the closer you are to the next win. Fast recovery serves anyone at any age well. Vince Lombardi said, “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.” Recover and move forward.
• Review.
  If you review the why in your losses and strengthen your weaknesses, new opportunities will arise. In sports no game has ever been lost the same way.
• Humility.
  Losing challenges us and keeps us humble. It teaches us there are others who are better. The emphasis should be motivated to be better.

Preparing for winning and losing is critical. It is far better to lose and learn than to always win and not learn how to lose. If winning and losing were not important, we would not keep score.

If you are a business owner, an employee, a student or a teammate, what do you have to lose?

An account, a promotion, an employee, a score, a game? The answer is yes, all of these and more. But the bigger question is – what are you learning and how are you improving?

So what about the 2016 Pirates? Well, they are heading to the championship game. They earned their spot with three consecutive wins in a double elimination playoff. Regardless of the outcome, valuable lessons will be learned. Go Pirates!

After you have done the heavy lifting and spent the necessary time and effort putting together your brand identity, don’t fall short when it comes to your message and execution. Make sure your content is relevant and captivating and then proceed to shout it from the mountaintops.

This is the time to fearlessly spread your message.

And we mean fearlessly.

It is not the time to vacillate. Go big or go home! You have a story to tell. Getting your brand message out is critical. You must believe that in your particular niche, you are the voice of authority.

This fearless quality is what can be the turning point to success – or not. Even if it takes some time to penetrate your consumer base, this confidence and conviction is what keeps you moving forward. The delivery and construction of your message may be refined over time, but it needs to be confident and consistent. Because as our Chief Rocker always espouses; marketing is an art, not a science.

It’s hard and it’s scary when you put yourself out there. But, people will respond to your conviction and confidence. It’s inspiring. Tell your story.

Good day to you, friends, colleagues and cherished clients!

It’s a very special time here at Front Porch Marketing, as the month of March marks our five year anniversary.

Once upon a time, I gathered the “Porter Posse,” some of my trusted friends, brightest business and marketing minds and family, plied them with delicious food and drink, and shared my dream of opening a boutique branding and marketing company. That evening spent brainstorming would form the early framework of life on the Porch, and the love and support received provided the momentum needed to make it happen.

And so, in honor of our anniversary, here is a samplin’ of five rockin’ things we’ve loved about branding and marketing businesses along the way:

1. The Porch grew! It started with one fearless leader, but along the way we added diversity, depth and experience—one person at a time. Today, we are eight core team members strong!
2. Two words: Dream. Clients. Again, we started with one. One Dallas-based luxury brand. Today, we partner with an amazing cross-section of independent-thinking entrepreneurs who are passionate about their businesses. They have challenged us and fortified us and we are thankful to have each and every one of them.
3. We picked up a prestigious certification: WBENC. And we are darn proud of it. The Women’s Business Enterprise National Council is a national 501(c)(3) non-profit that provides a world class standard of certification to women-owned businesses throughout the country. No small feat, we are honored to have risen to the challenge and make the cut for two consecutive years.
4. Every day, we get to do what we love. Yes, branding and marketing! We are mad about it—branding, strategy, research and competitive analysis are at the core of everything we do. But we also rock the other pieces of the puzzle—advertising, communications, planning and mapping, email marketing, public relations, sustainability initiatives and social media strategy and implementation.
5. Our Clients’ success stories became our success stories. When our clients rock, so do we! Nothing is more gratifying than starting from chicken scratch, forming a plan, implementing a shared vision and watching it come to fruition. We recently highlighted two successful case studies on our website: PeopleResults and Empire Baking Company.

Thanks to all of you, the Porch is rockin’ after five great years!

Julie Porter is the chief rocker at Front Porch Marketing. You can follow her, julie_porter, or her company, itsfrontporch, on Instagram and Twitter, juliedporter01 or ItsFrontPorch.

Everyone has his or her own morning routine – mine happens to include hitting the snooze button at least once, a big cup of coffee and a quick scroll though Twitter.

Twitter is how I keep up with friends, keep up with the news, but most importantly- how I keep up with marketing. By following my favorite branding and strategy experts, I am able to learn their insights from decades of experience that I don’t have.

Over the past few months, I have curated a list of marketers that I follow to cover all the marketing bases, and here are just a few of my favorites.

Seth Godin (@ThisIsSethsBlog) – Author of the book, Purple Cow and others, where he discusses how to transform your business and yourself by being remarkable, posts daily about permission marketing and tips on how to be the “purple cow” in a field full of competition. His twitter is purely reposts of his blog, which ranges in topics from how to turn your creativity into a profession, to how to power a digital future for your brand.

Jay Baer (@jaybaer) – If you want a daily update on all different aspects of digital marketing, follow Jay, as he is the most re-tweeted person in the world among digital marketers. His posts include influence marketing workbooks, six step playbooks for handling social media complaints, and everything in between.

Ann Handley (@MarketingProfs) – If content marketing is your thing, then definitely follow Ann, as she is “waging a war on mediocrity in content marketing.”

Bonin Bough (@boughb) – He is currently chief of media and eCommerce at Mondelēz International (formerly Kraft Foods), and specializes in digital strategy that crosses paid, earned, owned and shared media. Posts a great deal of social media tips, and if you know Front Porch Marketing, you know we LOVE all things social media.

Marie Forleo (@marieforleo) – Guru of how to achieve the perfect work/life balance. Posts about how to build a business you love, increase customer trust through social media, and increase productivity in every day life.

Robert Caruso (@fondalo) – Another expert content and digital marketer, who tweets about innovative ways to improve your social media, tips on how to increase brand awareness for startups, and how to get results in B2B marketing.

Kim Garst (@kimgarst) – As one of Forbes top ten social media influencers, she is the queen of social selling strategy. Her tweets range from Facebook advertisement jumpstart guides, tips on how to keep the cost of SEO down, and “cheat sheets” for selling on social media.
Bryan Solis (@briansolis)- Expert on digital marketing who provides step by step help for brands looking to transform their digital approach to create a brand experience.

Neil Patel (@neilpatel) – If you want to read a little bit of everything about digital marketing, Neil is your guy. As a Forbes columnist with years of experience in marketing, he combines motivational business tips with the knowledge necessary to succeed as a modern marketer.

While these are just a few of the hundreds of successful and influential marketers to follow on Twitter, by reading a few of their posts daily I am able to keep up with the ever-changing world of marketing. In addition to following experts in the field, a lot of successful marketers follow venture capitalists, as they see and predict new innovation that affects most industries and markets. Effective and influential marketers have to keep up in order to connect with their target market, so why not utilize social media to do so?

Rachel Mains is an intern at Front Porch Marketing. Follow her on Twitter.

We on the Porch are passionate about Branding! We have talked about branding. We have talked about lifestyle branding. Now let’s talk about how photos define your brand.

Simply put, pictures are as integral to your brand as grapes are to wine! They bring your brand to life. Beautiful photography can be used in so many ways! Photos can be used on your website, for sales materials, market/trade shows, third-party training materials and for social media.

Delivering your brand message via social media is imperative. Of the top five social media sites, two of them are 100% visual! You can’t gram or pin without a photo, so what should that visual be? Your visual storyboard is just as important as your branding message.

Considerations:
Studio Shoot or Location Shoot?
Obvious or Subtle?
To Demonstrate or Not to Demonstrate?
Features need highlighting?
Professional or smart phone?
How to Represent the Brand?

Hold up a minute! How to represent the brand? Yes, remember all the branding work you’ve done around brand promise, brand characteristics … these need to be applied to your photography.  A simple three-question quiz to ask when choosing a photo to represent your brand:

1. Does it match your brand personality, characteristics and definition?
2. Does it evoke emotion?
3. Does it illustrate your story?

Should you invest in professional photography? Heck, yes. There is a direct correlation to sales for almost all the brands we represent. Photography matters. It is worth the investment.

Need proof? Here’s our Client L’Amour Des Pied’s showroom floor before and after an investment in photography.

Our world is served to us on screens and those screens can’t give us a 5 sense experience, we must rely on the photo to evoke necessary emotion. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. 

Branding Rocks!

Duh! Of course we are going to say that. It’s what we do. It’s what we are passionate about! So you have your logo. Sweet! You have a vision. Fantastic! You have beautiful photography. Terrific! But do you have a brand? Not quite.

At the core of every marketer is a storyteller. We love to tell stories about:

• products
• places
• experiences
• … well we don’t really need a list – we just like to tell stories!

Digital media has opened up the communication lines for marketers. In the ‘old days’ (as my children say) you had a story to tell about your company, product, place or experience but you had to pay mightily for that story to be shared. Now there are several public forums that you can utilize to tell your story, which is a MARKETING DREAM.

So what does this have to do with your brand? Your brand is your story and vice versa. Why is it important to have a BRAND strategy in addition to your marketing plan? Here’s 8 reasons (we could give you 80, but we will save some for porch conversations):

#1 Your story makes you uniquely you! No one else is the same, which DIFFERENTIATES you from your competition.

#2 Consistent branding translates into RECOGNITION.

#3 Your brand is a PROMISE to your customers, your team and to the marketplace.

#4 Brands create an EMOTIONAL CONNECTION with your customer.

#5 Branding creates TRUST with all audiences.

#6 An established brand provides BUSINESS VALUE.

#7 A compelling background, history or brand strategy will MOTIVATE your staff and provide DIRECTION.

#8 Branding can FOCUS and guide your marketing efforts, saving time and money.

Sounds pretty good, eh? So what are you waiting for? It’s time to start rockin’ YOUR brand strategy!

Forrester predicts that in 2016, US advertisers will spend more on digital advertising than TV ads. Interactive marketing spend (email marketing, social media, display advertising and search marketing) will be 30% of marketing budgets (up from 24% in 2014).

Whether you are a start-up, a small business, or a business that is well-established, you should give yourself the gift of an interactive marketing strategy in 2016.

An October 2015 study by Pew Research Center found that 65 percent of American adults surveyed use social networking sites. Without social media as part of your interactive plan, you miss delivering your message to two-thirds of the U.S. population!!

Already rockin’ a social media plan? Awesome. Go you!

Let’s talk Facebook. In 2015, Facebook was the only platform to see a drop in active usage (-9% per the chart below). As Facebook fine-tunes their ad machine, organic growth is almost dead, so efforts on this network seem to be for not. In fact, several articles are calling for a move away from Facebook.

*Global Web Index – social-q1-summary-report

But not so fast! Facebook is still the largest social media platform with 1.55 Billion users. YouTube is in second place with 1 Billion. All other platforms are in the millions. So rather than move away from it entirely, we suggest you pay attention and leverage your audience.

Gone are the days of random posts and sporadic efforts. You need a strategy to maximize your investment. Your strategy should include content, consistency, connection and currency (advertising spend). With the right approach you can:

• Maximize your spend
• Reach new customers
• Grow your overall interactive reach

As an example, right now, L’Amour Des Pieds (one of our clients) is running a contest, which is a great way to connect. The marketing goal was to increase e-newsletter subscription, so we used a boosted post on Facebook to promote sign-ups.

Entering the contest is easy:

1. Like the L’Amour Des Pieds Facebook page
2. Sign up for their e-newsletter on lamourdespieds.com
3. Follow L’Amour Des Pieds Instagram (@lamourdespieds)

The contest ends today at 5 p.m. and the email database has already tripled! It goes to show what a focused strategy can accomplish.

Do you have your interactive marketing strategy for 2016? The ‘Porch is ready to help you rock it!

We all recently celebrated Thanksgiving, spending the day focusing on what we’re grateful for. But it shouldn’t end there. Gratitude is not a moment, not a day, not a week, but a way of life.

There are obvious things to feel grateful about – food, shelter, family, friends. But don’t stop there. Be mindful. What does being grateful really mean? Where did the feeling come from?

According to The Gratitude Experiment, focusing on gratefulness and expressing gratitude raises our level of well-being and happiness. In an experiment, a test group was divided into three, with one group directed to journal gratitude, one group directed to journal the things that irritated them most during the day and one group was allowed to choose their focus. Not surprisingly, the group focusing on gratitude had a much greater sense of well-being. Statistics show that cultivating an attitude of gratitude increases overall happiness by 5%.

Dr. Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at University of California, Davis is leading a research team to quantify the causes of gratitude and its effect on health and well-being. They feel strongly that it begins with children. If we can raise grateful children, we are way ahead as a society.

Our friends at The Gem also focus on gratitude as part of their recommended daily regimen. It has a place of honor in the daily GEM journal distributed during their “Day in the Life” series. In fact, it is part of the mentality surrounding their brand. As an element of integrative nutrition and holistic living, gratitude is near and dear to the heart.

There is always something vying for our attention. The holidays bring commitments and distractions, professional to-do lists are ever-growing, our culture of connectivity brings with it no shortage of dismal world news, anxiety over the economy and political positioning, and the responsibilities of our home lives loom large. But take a moment at the end of each day and reflect on at least a couple of things to be grateful for. Some days it will pour out. Some days, you’ll be lucky to be thankful for the roof over your head. With practice, it becomes easier.

As a member of the rockin’ team on the Porch, we are actively and mindfully grateful for our wonderful clients and the chance to have an impact on their business and grow with them.

What are you grateful for?

Think of the last few things that you bought, big or small—a new phone, a pair of yoga pants, a new car, a pair of shoes, even a food item. All of these products have one thing in common: the company you purchased them from is selling you a lifestyle.

So what is a lifestyle brand?

Webster defines a lifestyle as an individual’s whole way of living, and a brand as (a) an identifying mark or label (b) the make of a commodity or (c) a special kind.

Wikipedia’s says: A lifestyle brand is a company that markets its products or services to embody the interests, attitudes, and opinions of a group or a culture. Lifestyle brands seek to inspire, guide, and motivate people, with the goal of their products contributing to the definition of the consumer’s way of life. They often operate off an ideology, hoping to attract a relatively high number of people and ultimately becoming a recognized social phenomenon.

In Forbes article A Survival Guide For Symbolic And Lifestyle Brands, they point out “(Lifestyle Brands) deliver strong social benefits through which a consumer will be able to subconsciously answer the question, “when I buy this brand, the type of people I relate to are…” they create a sense of belonging or disrupt the status quo. So, Nike aligns people who want to push their limits. Club Med connects those who wish to communicate; The Body Shop, those who value nature.”

If you are a lifestyle brand or if you aspire to be a lifestyle brand, you must fully grasp the lifestyle your customer aspires to and you must reflect it in thought, word and deed. You need to clearly communicate that you embrace the same ideals as your customer, but also define your product.
Consumers have started referring to brands as if they have their own personalities. Have you found yourself saying “That doesn’t seem like them” or “That was off-brand”? Case in point: a brand whose red cup can wage a war on Christmas.

In today’s constant barrage of communication, people want transparency, authenticity, and honesty. They want to admire and trust the brands they bring into their life. To create a lifestyle brand, you must:

1. Discover Your Brand: What do you want people to feel about your brand? Determine what lifestyle aspirations your brand fulfills, and communicate accordingly.
2. Create your Brand: Clearly define your brand personality. Your identity needs to be holistic. What is your brand’s whole way of living?
3. Communicate Your Brand {with confidence}. Be conversational. Our friends and family enhance our lives with their adventures and personalities. Consumers expect that from a lifestyle brand. Create experiences. Share your personality. Form connections. Express your personality on many different platforms.

“In designing a lifestyle brand, you have to know more than just designing clothes,” Tommy Hilfiger

Here on ‘The Porch we are making brands rock your lifestyle daily.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I lay in bed gazing at my newborn daughter, then just 2 months old, who was sleeping in the bassinet beside me. My husband had left hours earlier for a business trip, and I sleepily turned the television on.

The chaos and confusion in New York was just unfolding. And as the hours passed, it became worse. And worse. And worse.

What I didn’t know then was that my husband was supposed to be in a meeting at the World Trade Center that morning. The meeting had been moved a short time prior to his office in midtown, where his co-workers watched the unfolding scene in horror from their conference room window.

I often think of how my family narrowly avoided tragedy that day. My daughter didn’t lose her father, but 3,051 other children did lose parents. Wives, husbands, friends, neighbors, employees, public servants – such a heartbreaking loss of life.

But what rose in the aftermath of those horrible events was a tremendous sense of community and service. It made us all proud to be Americans. And today, on the anniversary of September 11th, Americans will unite in service in the same remarkable way that so many came together following the attacks. This National Day of Service and Remembrance honors all that this day has come to represent.

It doesn’t take much to take me back to those days and feel the tragedy, the sadness. But what I want to remember more is the bravery. The fighting spirit. The selflessness. The coming together. The service.

Those are the things I want to walk with me. Today and always.