How brand ambassadors are re-defining influencer marketing.

In today’s market, college students hold a considerable (and growing) amount of purchasing power. How does a brand target these highly-coveted consumers? Create brand ambassadors.

What is a Brand Ambassador?

Brand ambassadors are a component of influencer marketing.  Typically, they are employed to promote a company’s products and brand personality in their communities. Whether this is in-person or through social media, these ambassadors are generating valuable word-of-mouth impressions. Per research published on Invesp, word-of-mouth impressions create 500 percent more sales than paid media impressions. Nearly 90 percent of consumers report that they are more likely to give their hard-earned cash to a brand recommended by a friend.

Ambassadors are becoming increasingly prevalent, especially on social media platforms, such as Instagram.  Typically, an ambassador will post a photo featuring a product sent to them by a company. Ambassadors often explain the product and brand in the photo’s caption. They also include a special discount code for their followers to apply to online purchases.

Photo by Jens Johnsson on Unsplash

Brands on Campus: Why They Work

Influencer marketing is also common on college campuses.  I have seen ambassadors for companies such as Red Bull, Kind Bar and Bumble at UT Austin. They understand the immense purchasing power of students, especially due to mobile purchasing, and want to reach them in as many ways as possible. Brand reps often give away swag, free products, and sponsor campus events.

Millennials are interested in building their online presence through social media.  They are willing to feature exciting products for companies with little in return. Though ambassadors are not paid, there are many perks to their ‘job’. These include free products, access to brand-sponsored events and networking opportunities throughout the industry.

The True Value of Ambassadors

Brand ambassadors have proven valuable to the companies they represent as well. They increase a company’s social presence by constant content generation. They also provide consumer feedback, personally and from their peers. Companies value this insight from their most-coveted target market.

When I return to school in the fall, I expect to see many brand ambassadors on campus. Some of my favorite past examples include when Kind Bar gave students free breakfast bars during finals week. Express ambassadors, or students part of ‘Express U’, set up tables on campus to showcase the clothing company’s newest products.

I can’t wait to see how brands show up on campus this school year!

How do you know when its time to rebrand?  Maybe you know that something is not quite right about your brand strategy. Perhaps your brochure copy sounds a little clunky and stale. Or your logo does not render well on mobile devices. Maybe the overall design of your website seems, well, old.

A rebrand can be a time-consuming (and potentially expensive) process.  Before you jump in, ask yourself a few key questions.

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

Does your brand look dated?

Design trends come and go. What worked for your company in say, 2006, might not work for your company now – especially if part of the crux of your business is offering the latest technology or ideas. The Apple logo is a perfect example.

Has your product or service changed?

Where you started out as a company might not be where you are now. A few years and a couple pivots later, your company might offer a totally different set of products or services. Does your brand reflect everything you offer today?

When Amazon first started, they were an online purveyor of books. Now they are an online (and offline) purveyor of everything. And their brand has evolved to reflect that change.

Has your customer changed?

Kids these days. With the hair, and the clothes, and their insistence on disposable furniture… Now, before we jump on the “Millenials ruin everything” bandwagon, consider this:

• Less than 60% of Americans live in the same state they were born in. That may seem like a lot, but according to US Census Data, it was almost 70% in 1950.
• People born between 1990 and 2000 are now more than 2.4 times more likely than the average American to be paying off student loans, and have a median income of $24,973; older millennials’ median income is still just $47,854.

How One Generation Changed The Way We Think About Furniture. Buzzfeed.com 

I can see why Millenials would prefer to buy a dresser from Ikea, rather then a matching bedroom set from their local furniture store.

Have your customer’s tastes and aspirations changed? How do they like to communicate? Does your brand speak to where your customer is now, or where they were 20 years ago?

Ultimately, when your brand doesn’t reflect who you are, it’s time to make a change. Is it time for a rebrand?

In April, we discussed using the start, stop, continue approach to cultivating the growth you want from your 2018 marketing plan. Good marketing begins with branding.

“Branding gives you an exceptionally effective way to broadcast who you are to your target market quickly and efficiently.”– Rick Haskins, MultiChannel News.

Therefore, start by determining who you are and who you aspire to be as a company. What is your vision? “A brand’s strength is built upon its determination to promote its own distinctive values and mission,” Jean-Noel Kapferer wrote in (Re)Inventing the Brand (2001).

Who you are should be based in part by what target customers want. What / who do your customers or clients need you to be? Therein lies the power of the branding exercise. With the right guidance and strategic partnerships, in working through the branding exercise you can determine what your brand should be, what makes the brand relevant to your target, and how to best describe its personality.

Branding Exercise Defines Key Brand Pillars

Great brands have three key attributes:

Conviction
Belief by everyone within your company that the brand is important and that the brand stands for a specific and important promise to the consumer.

Consistency
Imprint the brand into the essence of the organization so it comes alive for everyone it touches. Brand consistency equals earnings consistency.

Connection
Your brand must connect (through conviction and consistency) with target consumers to be effective. After all, as Zig Ziglar said, “If people like you they will listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

Whether your company is established or new to the market, large or small, retail, direct buy, online or MLM, one of the most important things you can do to achieve growth is to create a strong brand. It is a critical component of any business.

Take the time to define your brand architecture. The exercise is valuable. We’d love to help define your company’s foundation.

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As I skim materials for my upcoming Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Marketing and Sales class, my mind wanders (Hey, a squirrel! Or is it procrastination, perhaps?). I must blog. Now.

This post builds on my colleague Jacqui Chappell’s last blog on differentiating against competition. She is known as being the writer extraordinaire on the Porch, so I do not want to disappoint as I follow a post from her! So just read this blog for content and nuggets of marketing and sales knowledge. Puhleeeease!!

There is no one size fits all marketing and sales strategy. And this post does not suggest it, either. Period.

However, as I stare at a document asking me to define “current and aspirational competitors and their market share,” I realize Front Porch Marketing has a million and one competitors. I do not watch them daily, nor do I care if they are watching us.

I was asked recently by a client if they should list names of their clients on their website, collateral materials, etc. My answer: Heeeelllll, yes! If you are doing your job well, then no competitor can cold call your client list and take them away from you.

Doing your job well is obviously the first way to weed out your competitors.

Here are five more:

1. Define your brand. Know your pillars.
2. Communicate your brand consistently inside and out. If you look like every other company in your category, you are not doing this, nor is your brand defined.
3. Look outside your industry. Take key learnings from strong or unique brands in other spaces and consider how you can use them to help your brand.
4. Talk to your clients / customers. Ask them why they selected your company or product over others? What didn’t they get from their last partner or other product?
5. Ask yourself if who you consider your main competition is really that. Speaking to two business owners independently recently, they named each other as direct / primary competition. The more we learned about said businesses, the more we found them to be great complements to each other’s concepts and thought of more than a dozen ways they could leverage each other to grow their businesses. (Maybe if they use our ideas, they will let us blog about them specifically in the future.)

Identifying and evaluating your competition is an important exercise, there is no doubt. But it’s a delicate balance. Knowing they are there keeps you on your toes, pushes you to do your best work, and provides occasional inspiration. But ultimately, what will differentiate you from your competitors is your brand, the work that you do, and the way that you do it.

So rock your brand, rock your work and rock your competitors! TTFN!

A great logo makes your business. It serves as your abbreviated calling card, and speaks to your company’s culture, beliefs, and defining qualities without explanation. Add in color, font and unique graphical aspects and your logo becomes your brand.

“Your brand’s logo is the sort of thing that can have a bigger effect on your business than you first think,” says John Rampton of Forbes. “The wrong logo can make your brand come off as unprofessional, assuming anyone notices you at all. A good logo will create instant recognition within the minds of your target audience.”

Your logo should be unique, memorable, timeless, and versatile. It should stand out in the market. And it should represent your business and its message.

So you have an amazing logo!?!? NOW WHAT? Two simple but surprisingly difficult ideas:

Protect and Share.

On repeat. Make it your 2018 chorus.

From pictograms, ideograms, hieroglyphs to today’s world of avatars, emojis and icons, it can get confusing fast. If you are in a sea of sameness, unprotected and using your marks haphazardly, you are dead in the water.

Your logo usage must be easy, clear, and second nature. Take the Olympic rings, for example. No one mistakes them, everyone knows exactly what they represent, and what time it is when you see them. You can even hear the song in your head, can’t you? No questions. Put your logo under that filter. Every time you put it in play.

If you don’t diligently protect your marks, you are wasting effort.

So how do you protect your logo? You have standards, you have guidelines, you have a playbook and you follow it. No. Matter. What.

Remember, strong brands are:

• consistent at every touchpoint
• supported by strong teams
• not forced
• protective of their image

So in 2018, protect that brand. Share it. And do it again and again. As always, we can help!

What should I blog about? I asked my friend, as we texted this afternoon. “Instant connections,” she said. “Whether it’s a business or a personal relationship. Like a friendship born in a seedy Grand Prairie volleyball warehouse.”

It’s true. We became friends three years ago in a cold, remote, loud volleyball warehouse where we spent an entire weekend watching our daughters play for the same club team. We bonded quickly over our disdain for the helicopter parents in attendance and the absurdity of the diet our girls were forced to adhere to. By the next tournament we had a wagon full of inside jokes that we shared … and we were off.

Today she is one of my very closest friends, even though our daughters are no longer close, and volleyball is but a distant memory.

What causes people to gravitate to each other? And what enables those authentic connections to endure? The same can be pondered in business – what causes people to gravitate to businesses or brands and maintain that loyalty?

Brand loyalty doesn’t happen by accident. Brands that cultivate loyalty find ways to emotionally connect with their customers. How is this accomplished? Here are three things to consider:

1. Focus on what your brand does best. If you try to be all things to all people you’ll end up being nothing to anyone. Be bold. Be unique. Differentiate your brand around what makes you, YOU.
2. Serve your customers. Wow them. Take care of them. Listen to them. Serve them. Give them reasons to come back to your brand again and again.
3. Determine what your brand stands for and deliver on your promise. You must become relentless in your dedication to deliver on your brand promise. Every day.

Creating authentic connections and maintaining a successful brand that brings loyal customers to your door is key. Does your brand measure up?

We are passionate about branding here on the Porch! If your brand isn’t speaking to your customers the way it should, give us a call. We can help.

Customer experience is a daily topic on the Porch. Those who know me are probably like “smh” that I would say I learned about customer experience from Disney Princesses ‘cuz mama be like, Hey, Cinderella, what’s the story all about … you know, the Suzy Bogguss song?!?! No? Well, Google it …

Did you know Millennials ranked Disney number one in the latest Brand Intimacy Report***?

***Survey was not by the Porter family nor was the Porter family surveyed for this report.

Why did they rank Disney number one you ask? Millennials tend toward “escapism and the need for respite” during this point in their lives. Disney delivers. The Disney brand rocks it with Millennials, children, teens, parents, grandparents and everyone in between.

My latest experience at Disney World brings me back to why the most powerful brands are the ones that have mastered customer experience, among other things.

Three customer experience takeaways from Disney:

1. Hire people who love their jobs and continually give them reasons to love it. They have to love it. There are people of all ages touching Disney Princesses and their hair and clothing for hours on end. Random lils asking questions about the Princess’ movie or last episode of their Disney Junior show. Upon each interaction, there were smiles and dialogue about the show and questions about whether they liked the outcome of that episode or if they knew what Belle’s favorite book was. My favorite answer, “Yes, princess, your hair is the same color as mine.” Swoon.
2. Consistently deliver on the brand at every touch point. When you call the front desk or housekeeping or the restaurant at a Disney property, you always hear, “Welcome home.” If you ask, “Are you open tomorrow?” You will most certainly not hear, “We are off tomorrow. Sorry.” Take note friends.
3. Words your team speaks matter. You are called your highness or majesty. Your children are called princess or prince or your highness every time you turn around. How can you not love being at Disney?

Customers and clients are the new royalty. The quality of customer experience you must offer to compete in your market and win is of the utmost importance — now more than ever.

Dream big marketer. Be A Champion.

Disney, you got me hook, line and slipper.

Have you heard? This year marks our five year anniversary of doing business on the Porch! And in honor of this milestone, we are keeping the “Five Train” rolling! So hop on board, we’re sharing five things we LOVE to do each and every day! 

So how DO we love to spend our time?

1. Branding – And more branding. It’s the cornerstone for every bit of marketing we do, branding is everything. We love taking clients through our thoughtful brand architecture development process, just as we did recently for Spa in the City. Getting clients started off on the right foot, with the right message, is a great passion of ours!
2. Marketing Plans – After the branding process has been completed, development of a creative and thorough marketing plan follows. Front Porch Marketing’s most recent plan development for The Younity Group was a completely rewarding exercise.
3. Email Marketing – Helping our clients reach their customer base with content-rich, targeted email marketing is critical to their success. Our client partnership with PeopleResults has yielded a highly successful email marketing program. See their latest email blast.
4. Social Media – An integral part of any marketing plan, social media is where we truly rock. Maximizing our client’s presence across multiple social media channels is downright fun. Take a look at The GEM‘s Facebook page for proof of our social media love affair!
5. Mentoring Future Marketing Rock Stars – Such as Sarah Kreuger, our Kid Rocker. Sarah spent the summer as one of our interns, and we loved having her on board. Check out her absolutely brilliant blog, “The Presentation: Marketing to the College-Bound Generation” – this girl just gets it!

We LOVE branding. We LOVE marketing plans. We LOVE our clients. We LOVE our business. We LOVE rocking’ it! Thanks for taking the ride with us!

And last, but not least, we would love for you to join us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.

We. Are. So. Feeling. It.

Our five year business anniversary of making branding and marketing rock for our amazing clients has made us totally mad about the number five. FIVE. 5. Cinco.

And so, in keeping with our five obsession, we present Five Rockin’ Things We are Doing for Clients:

1. Development of the Todomodo Website: TodoModo is a consulting and investment firm. We were able to get in on the ground floor with them – we started with the branding process, defined their brand strategies and then translated it to this site. We loved working with them on this and are continuing to be the company’s marketing partner! We wrote and ran this release on the wire for them among other things.
2. Ellen Hoffman Designs at the Accessories Circuit: Ellen, the doyenne of Ellen Hoffman Designs, is a wildly talented jeweler that we are privileged to work with. We promoted her at the Accessories Circuit at the Javitz Center in New York.
3. The Gem Yelp Event: The GEM welcomed elite Yelpers to a mini “Day in the Life” event. Yelp promoted the program as an educational “how to” series.
4. Feizy Rugs Shows at High Point Market: At a champagne brunch at High Point Market, Feizy Rugs and the finalists in its Haute Trends^TM design competition revealed the initial designs for the collection. Each designer’s initial Haute Trends designs are featured on the Feizy website.
5. Vistage: For the past year and a half, our Chief Rocker has been a member of Vistage, which is a fantastic organization that brings together successful CEOs, executives and business owners and groups them into private peer advisory groups guided by expert executive coaches. These peer groups and coaching sessions help members solve their most pressing business opportunities.

We love our clients. We live for our clients. And there’s nothing more gratifying than helping clients rock their businesses!