Here are eight of those core factors that pushes a strong brand ahead of its competition and allows it to change with the times, while keeping its core values intact.

1. Audience Knowledge – A strong brand knows exactly who its audience is, what they need, desire, fear and want. The brand will keep delivering solutions to their ideal audience over time and will not be stuck in the past.
2. Product Differentiation – A strong brand can instantly be separated as unique from its competition, and the owners of the business know exactly how to do that through its strong marketing messages.
3. Brand Promise – The brand’s promise takes into consideration the brand’s position in the market place and can be articulated to the public via marketing, or it can be demonstrated via actions. The promise is implied to the audience in intangible ways.
4. Competitiveness – The strongest brands know where to compete, whether it is on price, service, or some other criteria. Brand ambassadors know exactly what advantages their brand offers over other brands, and can easily express it.
5. Message Consistency – All brands need to send a consistent message through all marketing channels to avoid confusion and a washed-out brand. While brands do need to understand the subtleties of different social media marketing, they need to know first who and what they are.
6. Powerful Vision – Your ability to tell your brand story in detail while also sharing your vision with your audience is paramount to creating a strong brand that can stand the test of time. The vision informs the marketing efforts that drive the message.
7. Product Awareness – This is earned through excellent marketing programs that give attention to the benefits of the product, directed toward the ideal audience. It seeks to ensure that even non-customers are familiar with the brand and know that it is trustworthy. The customers are very loyal and are repeat customers.
8. Passion – The joy and focus that passion brings to the table when it comes to your product and service will sustain the brand during both lean times and times of plenty. The passion will also enable you and your team to provide top-notch customer care and continued spectacular product and service development.

Building a strong thriving brand takes time, commitment and effort. It takes the willingness to stick to the messages for the long term and not forget what your true point of being is. To serve your target audience, solve their problems and deliver solutions that stand the test of time. Don’t forget these important points as you move forward building your own business.

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Think about your business.  Do all of these things flow seamlessly one to another?

• Put Your Customers’ Needs First – Everything you do must be thought of and seen from your customers’ perspectives, not yours’. Make sure that every thing you do and create is with your customer’s needs and ease-of-use.  Every bump in the road or discordinate message can cost you sales.
• Be Able to Explain How Your Solution Is Different – Everyone in your industry is marketing to your customers, often offering the same things that you are. But, if you can explain how you’re different you’ll win the sale. The only way to do that is to continuously watch the competition, incorporating the lessons learned into your product development and delivery.
• Distribute Your Products/Services How Your Customers Want Them – The channels you use to sell your products or services are important, too. If you’re not selling where your customer is, you won’t succeed. You may need to invest in professional shopping cart software.  It is crucial that your sales/delivery process be super smooth and work in a way your customers can easily understand.  This includes sign ups for webinars and other freebies too.  If you customers are not very tech savvy make sure everything is really easy to understand and fully explained. As I said earlier every bump and issue can cost you a current or future sale and will certainly not earn you referrals.
• Know How You’ll Advertise and Market – When you put all the above together, which ways will work best to advertise and market your business? Will you use a website, a blog, video, pay-per-click marketing, email lists or something else? Can your email or shopping cart system help better segment your market?
• Understand Your Budget Inside and Out – Everything comes down to money. You can only do what is within your budget to do. If you’re on a shoestring right now, don’t waste time looking at solutions outside that budget.
• Ensure Strategies Are Doable – Each part of your business will start with a strategy, the “big idea,” and you may have to tone these down based on your budget and resources.
• Know What Tactics You’ll Use to Reach Your Goals – Tactics are based on strategy and what your customers will respond to.
• Understand How It All Works Together – Finally, you need to know how all these activities will work together effortlessly. You don’t necessarily need to understand how all the tech works but you do need to understand how each of these areas impact and flow into each other.

The aim is to put together the strategy, operations, finance and marketing of your business in a way that each works together seamlessly. It is almost certain you will not be able to manage every facet yourself and that is OK.  Working together with someone you trust (like The OSP  😀 ) that understands how to fit together the parts you don’t will allow you to craft a totally seamless customer experience.  Customers that are happy and feel valued are the key to a successful and growing business.

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Track the right information about your blog and website provides many numbers that you can view and study. Viewing the right stats may help you do more of what is working, and less of what is not working.

With the right numbers you can tell how many people are visiting your blog, what they’re reading, where they came from and more. You can determine through statistics how many people come to your site and “bounce” off, and how many stick around to read more. Plus, if you have your analytics set up right, you can figure out how many you’re converting to subscribers and how many of those because customers.

Here are the top MUST TRACK marketing stats you’ll want to look at:

• How Many Visitors – This is pretty self-explanatory, but it’s a good indicator if your content marketing is working or not. If your number of visitors is steadily moving upwards then your content is doing its job.
• How Many New Visitors – Knowing how many visitors are new is also an important number to notice. This helps you know if you’re getting a rise in notice and a wider audience.
• Where the Visitors Came From – This is an important metric, because if you have more visitors from one place over another you can then put more effort in the place that is converting.
• How Many Repeat Visitors – Having repeat visitors can be a good indication of having content that readers want to consume. If you have low repeat visitors, you may not be converting well or retargeting visitors well.
• How Many Visitors Bounce Off – Most blogs have some bounces but if you have a super-high bounce rate, it can be a sign of poor targeting.
• How Many Visitors Stay to Read – Look at how many people read your blog posts, and what they’re reading. Create more content that they like to read.
• How Many Visitors Comment – Engagement is a great sign of good social media marketing and if you don’t have enough, do what you can to get more.

And the two most important numbers of all:

• How Many Visitors Sign Up for Email Lists – One of the points of driving traffic to your website or blog is to get email subscribers. You should do what needs to be done to collect as many targeted subscribers as possible, because email is where you’ll earn repeat website and blog readers and where you’ll get customers.
• How Many Subscribers Convert to Customers – The other number that is essential to know is how many subscribers convert to customers. This will help you know if what you’re doing is working in the way you hope.

If you don’t know this information, it’s hard to know if what you’re doing is working. If you really want to make your business exceed expectations and run a successful online marketing campaign, then knowing these numbers and responding with appropriate actions will make all the difference.

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Here are some of the most common mistakes which can hurt your ability to attract new customers and grow your business.

• Not Sticking to One Brand – Don’t try to be someone different online than you are offline. Don’t try to recreate your brand for every social media network. Keep the same brand image, slightly changed up for each network’s platform and features, but keeping the same colors, values, and ideals as you have on your website. You want your customers to know who you are, no matter where they connect with you.
• Not Watching Your Competitors – You don’t want to copy your competitors, but watching them will help you stay one step ahead of them. It might even alert you to some cosmic change in the marketplace if you are paying attention. Be aware of what type of products and/or services your competition provides and be ready to do them one better.
• Not Having a Goal – It’s imperative that for each type of marketing you do, you have a goal in mind. Whether it’s content marketing, pay-per-click marketing, or social media marketing, having a goal to reach will help you know whether or not you’ve accomplished your mission. Plus it will help you know how to move forward.
• Not Having a Domain Name – Not only should you have a domain name, but you should also have an email @yourdomainname if you want to be taken seriously as a business owner. You can easily set up your own email address with your webhost provider, sometimes at no additional charge.
• Not Having Diverse and Regular Content – It’s no longer enough to simply put up 500-word blog posts and expect to get a loyal following. Today you need longer blog posts, video, podcasts, infographics, memes and more to ensure that you are reaching all parts of your audience. Everyone learns differently, and it’s your job to educate them in the way they learn best.
• Not Having an Email List – It’s surprising how many business owners there are who don’t realize the importance of building an email list for successful online marketing. But it’s true; some people don’t build an email list, and they should.
• Not Having Well-Written Content – You can’t just slap anything up and expect it to be successful when it comes to content marketing. You need original, unique content that speaks directly to your audience. In addition, you need curated content from other experts which you comment on.
• Not Focusing on Benefits over Features – It’s tempting to discuss all the features of your product or service instead of the benefits. All marketing messages, even on your “about us” page, need to be focused on your client and how your products or services benefit them. That can be difficult to wrap your brain around sometimes, but it is imperative in order to get more conversions.

Don’t make these mistakes with your online marketing. If you really want to be successful at online marketing, learn from those who have gone before you, and do not try to reinvent the wheel.

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Use Facebook, Twitter, forums and even comments on blog posts, as well as other social media to gather the information that you need to conduct real-time marketing information regarding your industry on your target audience. All of these can be very helpful to your business and increase your bottom line exponentially.

• Engage Your Audience – Using real-time marketing efforts and listening to social media for conversations your audience is having will help you engage better with your audience in real time.
• Improve Understanding of Your Customers – By monitoring the chatter among your customers within a forum or group, you can get a deeper understanding of what your customers need.
• Deliver More Relevant Content – The understanding you develop can help you improve the type of content you create overall, not just in real time but planned content too.
• Connect Better with Customers – This understanding helps you connect better with customers in a way that makes them feel important and understood.
• Create Innovative New Products – Your new understanding of your customers and the audience will enable you to create better products and services truly designed just for your target market.
• Get More Leads – Deploying real-time marketing efforts will help you get more leads because you will find ways to get your products or services to relate to what is happening right now.
• Improve Conversions – When your audience feels as if you really know them and share their values, they will be more likely to make a purchase from you.
• Grow Your Business – All of these activities will ultimately help you grow your business faster than you may have thought possible. Any one of your real-time marketing campaigns can become viral.

Using what you know about your audience, the current news in the industry and the daily happenings around the world, and how it can relate to your audience will help your business grow faster. The result is that not only will you make more sales, but you will also create more products or services that are extraordinarily relevant to your audience.

This happens because with real-time marketing you always have your ear to the ground and are monitoring the mood of the audience as well as the news of the times and how it can relate to your products and services. You not only send out information that connects your products and services with what is happening today, but you can actually create new products and services based on the information that you gather. It’s a win-win for your business and your customers.

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