Spring has sprung and Q1 2017 branding and marketing is about to come to end, friends! We love the feel of the sun on our shoulders, all the blooming going on around us, and the hopeful smile that the season puts on our faces! We are happy and excited about, well, everything!

Here is what we have to share:

We’re Having a Contest!

As you know, we are celebrating our sixth year in business with our own version of “Pick Six.” Well this month, in celebration of spring and our giving spirit, we are taking the Pick Six to you, our clients and friends! Be among the first six to reply “Please Rock My World” and you will receive six free social media posts for your business on one social media platform of your choice!

• Six Winners
• Six Free Rockin’ Social Media Posts
• Six Expert Rockers posting
• Six Days in April
• Winners will be contacted on April 6th!

Front Porch Marketing Q1 2017 Branding & Marketing Review

April is the absolute perfect time to review your Q1 branding and marketing efforts. Are you meeting your goals? If not, it’s time to quickly re-collaborate for Q2. Here is a refresher on metrics vs. analytics. Call us if you need to take an objective look at your results.

SEO and PPC Benefits

When it comes to boosting traffic to your website, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) are hugely beneficial. Need further convincing? Call us. We would love to chat about it. We are currently rockin’ it for our new clients OLLI at UNT and Women’s Business Council Southwest and loving every minute of it!

Fresh Branding and Marketing Initiatives

Spring into your next marketing initiative with a fresh brand look and feel. Why not update your marketing material creative and messaging? We are proud to partner with new client Owens Machine and Tool Company to do just that for a recent trade show.

Texas CEOs Rock!

Our Chief Rocker heard a refreshing and uplifting outlook on the Texas economy for 2017 and 2018 recently at the 2017 Vistage Executive Summit by Alex Chausovksy, senior analyst, ITR Economics. Also at the Vistage Summit, Roy Spence, co-founder and chairman, GSD&M, shared key insights and lessons from legendary, purpose-inspired leaders he’s worked with over the years. He presented actionable ideas to inform making decisions that support your Core Purpose. Decisions that build a business—and a life—of success.

As Always …

We are grateful for so many things – a Q1 2017 branding and marketing jam, our rockin’ team, amazing clients, faithful advocates, collaborative partners and truly great friends. Thank you for the many referrals! Keep them coming!

Follow us! Join our blog nation here, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn!

The term “Pick Six” has long been associated with big success:

• In horse racing, Pick Six is a wager in which a bettor picks one horse in each of six races, leading to a big payout.
• In football, Pick Six refers to an interception (pick) being returned for a touchdown.
• In lottery terms, Pick Six refers to the big payout that occurs when six regular numbers are picked.
• In wrestling, Pick Six is a ranking system used by the Ring of Honor to determine championship contenders.

Big. Successes.

And so, in honor of our sixth year in business, we on the Porch formulated our own Pick Six … for business success, big success!

1. We’re picking Brand Architecture. It’s so important. When was the last time you really evaluated your brand? Is it due to be re-visited? We can help you look at it in a fresh way to ensure you are capitalizing on what makes you unique.
2. Number two on our list of picks: What have we been up to on the Porch? We had an extremely rewarding experience (and an absolute blast) at the PowerGen Trade Show in Orlando with our rocking client, TodoModo. Check out our blog about the experience!
3. Number three involves talking, and lots of it. What have we been talkin’ about? Maximizing your marketing! We spoke about that very thing at the Arlington Board of Realtors‘ Meeting January 27th.
4. What we are off our rocker about? The Super Bowl! The Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots will face off in this colossal battle February 5th and we know what we will be serving at our soiree: The Barefoot Contessa’s Parmesan and Chipotle Popcorn, a chili bar (seriously genius idea – thank you Food & Wine Magazine) and Iron Skillet Peach Crisp. A Texas menu if we’ve ever heard one.
5. Highlights from the Porch Team bring us to our number five pick. Our rocking’ interns, Grace and Rachel, have been an impressive breath of fresh air around here – and we are enjoying watching them weigh their next steps, as their graduation dates are rapidly approaching!
6. And our final pick: The power of the referral in gaining new clients. We are continually amazed and humbled that our Porch family continues to grow through marketing and referrals. Thank you for all you do to keep our Porch rocking!

Please keep those many referrals coming. We are so grateful. Join us on the Porch via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Subscribe to our blog here.

Thanks, friends, for riding the sixes with us. Here’s to another wildly successful year!

Marketing mistakes happen. Heck, mistakes period happen. Seems the older I get the more I make them. I blame it on my kids age.

Many of the business owners and marketing leaders we have talked with so far this year have said Q1 2017 projections are even more positive than anticipated. Fan – freakin’ – tastic!!

Avoid these three marketing mistakes this quarter:

1. Chasing the new, shiny object(s). Wait. What was I blogging about … With all the artificial intelligence news, virtual reality hype, etc., don’t forget the foundation – the 2017 marketing plan with strategies, goals and tactics. Don’t get me wrong, keeping your eye on the latest and greatest is a must, but don’t let what brought you here and all that you planned to do fall by the wayside.
2. Lack of communication with your team. We get it. You are being pulled in a million directions, and it sometimes can be a challenge to make sure your team knows what is going on in all parts of your business. Your team can help and want to do so. If you can’t keep up with your regular team meetings, calls or emails, ask someone to step up in your stead. Your team and marketing partners will thank you and your business will also reap the benefits of continued internal communication.
3. Give everyone a say in marketing decisions. When it comes to marketing and branding, opinions are like … sorry, started to quote my friends Salt-N-Pepa. You don’t need to pass marketing ideas around to each and every business partner, team member, family member (spouses included) and friend. Trust your team. You know, the people you pay to own and create your marketing plan, initiatives and assets.

I will leave you with those thoughts. May your Q1 2017 continue to rock. Oh, and happy freakin’ birthday week to me (shameless birthday brat plug).

Chief Rocker Julie Porter can be followed on Twitter and Instagram and so can her company. Follow Front Porch Marketing on Twitter by clicking here, like us on Facebook by clicking here and follow our LInkedIn company page and Instagram fun.

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!

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!

Highs and lows in life are inevitable. Things change, our realities shift and sometimes we find ourselves in a low cycle. Although these times in our life are never fun, they offer tremendous opportunities for growth. When you find yourself facing adversity, look for these silver linings:

1. You will find strength you never knew you had. Often times we fear the worst case scenario and wonder how we will handle failure. The answer is, you will be fine. You will persevere. And discovering this truth is empowering.

2. You will find your people. During tough times, look around. Who is there supporting you? Really supporting you? These are your people. Everyone else is periphery. Again, this discovery is a gift.

3. You will simplify your life. In times of confusion and strife, simplification is necessary. You must focus on only what is truly important. Everything that isn’t important falls away.

4. Your character and conviction will get you through. Regardless of where you find yourself, there is a reason. Stay the course. Remain true to what you know is right and honorable. There is peace in this.

It’s during hard times that we learn the most valuable lessons in life.

Silver. Linings.

Daylight savings time, warmer days and busy baseball fields are here, and when spring arrives, we usually feel another year is moving forward more quickly than a fastball! As we turn the corner to the second quarter of the year, it’s a great time to slow down a bit and think about how we can get more fresh air, brighten up our homes, and breathe some life into our one of our all-time favorite events – the business team meeting. Yes, I just said the dreaded word, meeting.                                                                                                                                           

It’s time to spring clean your meeting!

Why? Because none of us gets excited when hearing we have to attend another meeting, and most of us have heard or said it numerous times, “that meeting was a waste of my time!” Folks, if time is our most valuable asset, how can we stop spending it in unproductive meetings, and what will it take to change-up the agenda and make it worth it? If it’s time for spring cleaning, where do we start?

We start by changing our thought process to get rid of the old and start with the new. The traditional meeting that is set and run by a boss, who does most of the talking, and calls on individual employees to report their progress, does nothing to engage the team.  I have run these types of meetings in my prior work and learned the hard way that the bored looks, fidgeting, and glances at the mobile phones were caused by my failure to recognize the needs of the team.  I learned that I needed their help in changing everything about how we ran meetings, including thinking of them as “our meetings” vs. my meetings.

Once we are willing to think differently and engage with each other in change, it’s time to ask a ton of questions. Getting feedback is critical, so be persistent until the team is open to talking about the type of meeting wanted. If you have flexibility in date, time, location – put the question to the team and ask what works best. If you can involve everyone in setting the agenda – do it! Ask open-ended questions such as – what do we want to discuss, who do we want to hear from, what do we want to learn, who should we invite and why? Throw out old paradigms and bring in fresh ideas and perspectives from everyone on the team.

As the agenda starts coming together, someone on the team must organize it and everything else about the meeting so everyone gets the most out of the time spent. An advanced communication should be sent to all attendees to include date, start and end times, break times, location, dress code, names of attendees/guests, meeting objectives/agenda and if food or drink will be served. All of this information can be included in one final agenda document, and also available at the meeting. An organized meeting produces the best results, and everyone leaves feeling their time has been appreciated and well spent.

Spring cleaning isn’t easy, but we all know it’s worth the effort. As you consider thinking differently, engaging with each other to make changes, and organizing yourselves for more productive time spent, keep in mind two key things:

• If you are a leader, understand meetings are not all about you and engage others in helping you improve the time spent together. To have a successful meeting requires you to listen.

• If you are a participant, share your suggestions for the agenda well before the meeting and be willing to speak up during the meeting. To have a successful meeting requires you to contribute.

Finally, when you attend a meeting think about how many times you have asked a family member to put their technology aside at the dinner table or when speaking with you. We should all do the same in our meetings. Unplug and engage.

Your meetings will rock! Get to that spring cleaning friends, and we’ll see you later on the Porch.

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?

Friends, it may be time for a branding and marketing intervention: We love you. We value you. But sometimes, you need to recognize when it’s time to play in your own sandbox. 

We say it all the time on The Porch, “Branding and marketing are more an art than a science,” and our rockin’ Front Porch Marketing Team has spent more than a combined 80 years honing this art form to make a difference in our client’s businesses.

But we can only make a difference if our clients let us.

Our best clients are passionate, excited about their work, and open to new ideas that will enable them to leap ahead. We tell our prospective clients that we work best when we are partners, not vendors, and are treated like a member of their internal team. We believe in direct conversation and diving in the strategy debate while getting our hands dirty.

So … in the spirit of direct conversation (which is a foundation on which The Porch was built), here are a few recent examples of when you, Ms./Mr. business owner, leader or department head, should rock away from the branding and marketing table … rock far, far away friends:

1. You scribble your logo ideas down on paper and/or mock them up yourself on whatever design software du jour. Design software and a favorite font do not a creative director make. Our team of creative professionals work with our clients through a formalized branding process that crystallizes the brand’s vision and ensures that the brand puts itself out there in the best way possible.
2. You recommend a CMS platform for your website because that is the platform you use to manage your child’s sports team and its schedule. We develop and re-design websites constantly for our clients and their brands. We know what works and what doesn’t. Trust us to make these decisions that will accomplish your business needs and goals.
3. You are going to hire an intern or an admin to manage your social media. Both of those positions are vital to a company’s operations. But neither are qualified to take on something as important as social media. Why not go ahead and have your financial manager do it??? (See what I am trying to say here?)
4. You call a half day meeting with your business consultant, VP of sales and VP of marketing because your VP of sales doesn’t like a showroom sign created by the marketing department. Give the power to the people and let sales and marketing handle their feud that has lasted longer than the Hatfields battled the McCoys.

We believe collaboration is key. Bringing team members in from other departments for planning meetings and brainstorming sessions can add new perspective, create different ways of thinking and spark new ideas. Says Pharrell:

Remember, however, we branding and marketing peeps like to work “in a room without a roof.” So let’s work together! We are fully vested in getting your business the desired outcome. After all, if you aren’t successful, neither are we.

Rock on friends.

Chief Rocker Julie Porter can be followed on Twitter and Instagram and so can her company. Follow Front Porch Marketing on Twitter by clicking here, like us on Facebook by clicking here and follow our LInkedIn company page and Instagram fun.