Once in a great while, I send out an update. And by “once in a great while,” I mean something like “once a year.” A long time ago, I published an e-newsletter. Now I post tips here on the blog. (You can subscribe to it like a newsletter over on the right.)

It’s been a busy year at New Thought Marketing. Some highlights:

Mobile Apps

We’ve added mobile app development to our suite of services. Our first app (NameBuddy) is in the Apple app store and got a GREAT review on cnet. We’re currently in the early stages of development for a few more apps. As you’ve probably heard, more people are searching the Internet on their phones than on their computers now. Smartphone ownership and data usage have skyrocketed. There are so many opportunities for businesses to use mobile to increase their sales. We’re even testing out Facebook check-in deals for a physician practice client.

Mobile is probably the hottest and fastest-growing aspect of our business right now. We have a great development team, and our usual awesome designers and smart thinkers to help you develop a mobile strategy that works for you.

Social Media

We’re creating Facebook pages for clients (like this one) and running targeted contests and Facebook ads to drive engagement. We’ve seen strong results with Facebook ads. They’re inexpensive and offer endless targeting abilities. In a campaign we did last year for a major business association, Facebook was one of our best performing online ad outlets.

Online Reputation Management

If you haven’t claimed your business on Google Places yet, then quit reading this and go do it right now; it’ll only take you a few minutes. It will help you come up better on search results. Write a good description for Google Places and use that same description on other directory and review sites, like Yelp and Kudzu. (Make sure to claim your businesses on those sites, too.)

Then Google yourself and monitor your reviews on a regular basis (weekly for most of you). If you need help getting this all set up, let me know. We can do it for you or help you with it. We’ve had clients bring their laptops over and we divided up the list and got them set up in a few hours.

It’s a simple thing that many people put off but it’s really important you claim your pages and begin to ask your customers to write reviews. Word-of-mouth is still the top way to grow your business; increasingly, though, word-of-mouth is happening online. These are basic, easy tactics that every business should be doing.

Twitter

We’re still doing the occasional “Tweetorial,” helping business get set up on Twitter and learn the ins and outs of using it. Even if you don’t think you need Twitter, please go ahead and register for an account and grab your Twitter name (like www.twitter.com/sherean which is my personal one or www.twitter.com/newthoughtmktg) so that nobody else claims it. Same thing goes for Facebook. You want to set up your page and claim your vanity URL. (One minor hiccup with Facebook: you have to have 25 followers to your page before you can claim your company name/URL, assuming it’s available. You can probably ask your friends to follow you so you hit that platform quickly.)

Google+

The short answer is: wait. They haven’t rolled out their business offering yet. I do have lots of invites if you want to try it out and see what all the cool kids are doing.

YouTube

Video is a great way to allow prospects to get to know you. Did you know you can set up a branded channel on YouTube (like we’ve done here)? You can then embed videos on your website. The videos don’t have to be fancy. Just try not to say “um” or “you know” too many times and you’ll be fine! (I have a tendency to scratch my nose and play with my hair too much. So irritating!)

How to Keep Up with All This

There are a lot of inexpensive, effective marketing opportunities out there but it is daunting to keep up with them all and figure out which ones will give you a good R.O.I. We try to post links to smart how-to articles on our Facebook page, so follow us there if Facebook is your thing; we also opine on our blog. You can subscribe to our blog like a newsletter or it’s even available now in the Kindle store if you want to read it there!

Take good care,

Sherean and the team at New Thought Marketing

Yesterday, we defined positioning and explained why it’s critical for your business. It is probably the most important thing you can do to grow your business. In fact, is the foundation upon which all your marketing and business development efforts are built.

Still unsure? Let me give you some examples. When you think of Volvo, what one word comes to mind? Was it “safety?” Volvo owns that attribute. If Volvo were to come out with a sports car, it would just seem wrong. They’ve figured out that there is enough market share doing safety. They don’t need to do speed.

Now, think about Target vs. Wal-Mart. Where are you going for stylish dorm accessories? Target, right? Who has the lowest prices? Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has tried to roll out designer lines the way Target has, but the impression hasn’t stuck. People have it firmly in their minds that Wal-Mart equals cheap, not necessarily stylish.

All right, let me give you some local examples. The recruiter that specializes in sales management positions in the Southeast. Think that’s too restrictive? Think again. When she’s at a networking function, it is easy for her to explain what she does and easy for the person she just met to remember. Much easier than “general recruiting.” The security company that is the only one in town with nothing but 5-star reviews on Kudzu. (Much stronger to be that specific than to say: “we have great customer service.”)

So before you spend another dollar on a website or a brochure, take some time to figure out who you are. Your marketing dollars will go much farther when you have a focused message.

If you were to ask me to name the most important thing you can do to grow your business in 2011, I would probably tell you to figure out who you are and who you want to be when you grow up. Sure, I might suggest you develop deeper relationships with your customers through social networking and other tools. But just like it’s difficult to have a romantic relationship without having a strong sense of self, the same is doubly true for business.

We define positioning as the one simple statement that sums up who you are and what makes you unique. It’s important that your differentiator is a meaningful one. I often joke that New Thought Marketing is the only consulting firm in town whose founder is a red-headed, half-Persian female. That’s unique. It’s different. Heck, it might even be memorable. But is it MEANINGFUL? Of course not.

And here’s the kicker: if you don’t define yourself, your competition will define you. The minute one of your competitors claims to be the “fastest,” you are by default, slow. The minute they claim to be first to market with something, you are behind.

Once you have a good handle on who you are, it makes it so much easier to develop strong, effective marketing pieces. We build everything around communicating that differentiator in both words and visuals.

Sometimes, this is difficult. Often, you do the same thing as your competitors, only you’re “better,” or have better people, etc. Dig deeper. If you really do have the best talent, then you must have a great story behind how you’re able to attract and retain such top folks. Maybe your positioning strategy is hidden in that story.

Tomorrow, we’ll give you some examples to get you thinking.

IKEA has one of the world’s strongest visual brands. Look how brilliantly they are extending that brand that into their very own cookbook. The recipe photos are deconstructed abstracts images of the recipe’s ingredients. Beautiful. (And come to think of it, about as helpful as the directions are in their products.)

Hey, maybe IKEA should turn the images into a flashcard game where you guess what recipe each picture represents?

Starbucks has an iconic cup design that is a major part of their brand identity. Even still, they want to figure out a way to reduce the use of their cup and move towards a day where all cups are reusable, recyclable or compostable. And they’re backing that desire up with some cash. They co- sponsored a competition to come up with eco-friendly alternatives.

The winner, Karma Cup, has an absolutely brilliant plan: put up a chalkboard in the store and mark off every time someone uses their own reusable cup. Every 10th person will get a free cup of coffee. Genius! You’ll want to encourage your friends to do it because the more people do it, the more opportunities you have to win a free cup. The chalkboard is a great reinforcement tool. Read all about the contest and the great runner up ideas at FastCompany.

How could you use something like this in your own business? This goes beyond a personal frequent shopper card because it enlists your customer in actively recruiting other customers. Is there a product or service that you’d like to encourage the use of? Maybe it’s new and unproven and you could use a similar technique to motivate sampling.

Have a great weekend.

Yikes! Chevrolet in its pursuit of marketing excellence, has decided that they want their cars to be called “Chevrolets” and not “Chevys.” As if they have any say in what the consumer will call them. I can only imagine the board room discussions about brand consistency and how that will help them . . . help them what? Sell more cars? DON’T THEY KNOW THEY ALREADY HAVE A WELL-KNOWN BRAND NAME? AND IT HAPPENS TO BE . . . CHEVY?

Idiots.

Quick. Anybody remember the name of the electric car they’ve been working on and touting for years? Oh yeah, it’s the CHEVY Volt. Not the Chevrolet Volt. Or for that matter, nobody even calls it just the “Volt.” It’s the Chevy Volt, period.

<sigh> The brand police at Chevy, er, Chevrolet have gone so far as to issue a memo to its employees instructing them to stop referring to the brand by its nickname and instead, use its proper name. They’ve even – and I am not making this up – put little cuss jars up and have encouraged employees to put a quarter in the jar every time they slip and use the word “Chevy” instead of “Chevrolet.”

They cite great brands like Coke and Apple as models of smart, consistent branding. They did this without any apparent hint of irony because Coke is, after all, short for “Coca-Cola” and when was the last time you called your iPod an Apple anything?

OK so the lesson here is if you have a brand name that your customers use and it has positive associations, then be happy. Leave well enough alone.

As always, Seth Godin is a step ahead in understanding how product markets work and he is generous with his ideas. If I were Jeff Bezos, I’d pay attention. Godin’s underlying assumption is that whoever sells the most e-reader devices will control the publishing industry. So Amazon needs to drop the price of the Kindle and do whatever it takes to push the iPad out of the e-book reader market. He has some novel ideas such as:

Sign up to get a Kindle book of your choice every month for 12 months and get a free Kindle. Amazon presents you with ten book choices, and since the cost of delivering it is zero, there’s plenty of margin for all…

He has several more ideas so surf on over and check them out. It’s a smart, aggressive strategy. I hope Amazon is paying attention. I might add an idea or two of my own such as partnering with universities and textbook manufacturers.

What do you think? Is the Kindle going the way of the 8-track? Is Steve Jobs about to do it again?

Have you seen these pictures making their way around the Internets?

Yeah, I know it’s childish of me to pile on but this is the kind of thing that spreads faster than strep. The days of protecting your image and brand are OVER. Not just for BP, but for all of us. You can’t protect it; you have to sit up, take your lumps like a man (pardon the sexism), own what you did if you screwed up, do everything you can to make it right. Don’t take shortcuts or b.s. your customer (I’m talking to you, Toyota and you, Sigg, and you, BP) because we’re onto you and we will tell all our friends who will tell their friends and so on and so on and so on.

And you will live in infamy forever.

I still have businesses tell me they don’t want a Facebook page or a blog because they’re afraid they’ll get negative comments. Seriously? That’s what you’re worried about? The COMMENTS? How about the actual issues your customers have? Address them. And you know what? When you address them forthrightly in a public forum, most people will forgive you and even reward you for doing the right thing.

Having said that, I think it’s too late for BP. What do you think? Any shot of damage control here or are they done?

Author: Kemba Johnson

What you would give to a client, you should always give to yourself first.

I’m standing in a Mexican supermarket choosing pastries called besos, empanadas de crema and tabasqueños. No, I wasn’t grocery shopping (well, maybe a little), I was working.

New Thought Marketing was putting together a Cinco de Mayo gift box for clients. And we wanted to include some delicious Mexican pastries. If the boxes were long enough I’d just include the churros from my favorite stand and call it a day… after I tested them one more time of course.

But the box wasn’t long enough. So there I was on my grand pastry expedition. The first sweets I tried were frankly just okay. If I got these in a box, I’d think the idea was cool, but I wouldn’t be excited.

Off to the next place where the empanadas were soft, fresh and delicious, with a light dusting of sugar on top. Perfect. Two bakeries and six pastry tastings: It was a difficult job, but someone had to do it.

So the moral of the story (and yes there is one) is test your marketing promotions in order to give away value. It may be just a 10-cent pen. But if it has your name on it, it represents your brand. So it had better be a good pen, one that you’d like someone to give to you, not one that you have to shake to get to work (don’t you hate that).

At New Thought Marketing, we will often take a client to a promotional items showroom. Not only does this allow our clients to discover new promotional ideas, it allows them to test the quality. As much as you can, try to think about what a customer would be excited to receive, instead of what you are willing to give away.

Sometimes the answer will surprise you… and can actually be cheaper. For example, a major long distance company (I leave which one to your imagination) was offering 30 free minutes, 60 free minutes or a free long distance call of any length to new calling card customers.

Not only did the free long distance call win more new customers, it was also the cheapest, costing about $2.95 on average vs $11.50 for the 60 free minutes and $5.75 for the 30 free minutes. Without testing or putting themselves in the customers’ shoes, the company would have lost potential new customers.

Which one would you have chosen? Think about it: What is 30 minutes or even 60 minutes worth to you? It’s a little too nebulous to wrap your mind around. But a free long distance call…well, that’s a free call to your mother to say everything you need to say. And it doesn’t matter how long it takes. A conversion is ultimately more valuable than free minutes.

In the end, I hope our clients found the pasties delicious…I know I did. Too bad I didn’t have the pleasure of searching for the perfect margarita mix!

My husband and I have Sigg water bottles. Have you heard of the brand? It’s what all the cool kids use to cart around their water. Better for the environment than plastic bottles and better than a lot of sports bottles because they’re BPA-free. BPA, or Bisphenol-A, is considered toxic by some countries (Canada has banned it) and is a source of controversy here in the States. Nevertheless, the environmentally conscious, and certainly Sigg’s consumers, are all about BPA-free bottles. So Sigg promoted themselves as BPA-free and they basically lied. It turns out their liners do contain small amounts of BPA. They did a little verbal sleight-of-hand by saying that their bottles didn’t “leach” BPA in tests.

They knew what they were saying. They knew it was dishonest. That they didn’t know they’d get caught is shocking and stupid.

I honestly don’t think there’s enough BPA in the bottles for it to be a problem. But I’m pissed that they lied and I, like millions others, will never buy another Sigg bottle again. This is a bummer. I liked them so much I’ve blogged about them on my personal blog. Even bought a cute custom wrap for my husband’s bottle.

And the CEO of Sigg does not seem to know a lick about damage control. Sure, he claims to be reading and responding to emails personally. But then he goes and says stupid things like, “if retailers keep our old bottles on the shelf, there’s nothing we can do about that.” (I’m paraphrasing slightly.) Dude! You should be out front, apologizing, replacing bottles like crazy, getting independent testing to verify that your bottles and liners are now 100% BPA-free, etc. Actually, you should resign and let someone else clean up your mess. Because you lied. You double downed on your lie when questioned about it, and you’ve broken the consumer’s trust. That’s hard to win back. And since nobody will trust a word you say, you should step aside and let someone else try to mend the fences.

I would not want to be this guy’s PR firm.

I once worked for a guy who asked me to lie to the media. I looked at him like he had two heads and refused. He told me that I was his Vice President, that I was playing in the big leagues, and that I needed to do what was expected of me. Regrettably, I didn’t tell him to go f-himself. Fortunately, the magazine did not pick up the story and none of us had to decide whether we were going to do as we were told or risk losing our jobs.

If Sigg’s CEO had really come clean and reached out as I described above, his customers might be forgiving. As it is, he just handed his competitors several market share points. Kleen Kanteen, here I come!

Footnote: I tried to link to Sigg’s Facebook page but it’s disappeared. Is some ticked off fan messing with them? Or are they shutting down their community to avoid letting people have a place to post negative messages? Do they actually think the conversation will stop? No, it’ll just move on to someplace else where they won’t get to insert their voice . . . like Twitter or blogs. Stupid, stupid, stupid.