Marketing, Creativity & Branding, Oh My!

Here are a few ideas I shared with the audience at yesterday's New York Entrepreneur Week panel:

1) Don’t think about “old vs. new media,” but instead, choose the mediums where your audience is.

2) Make sure you have a marketing plan; people need to know who you are and what you offer. I have seen too many companies in the exact same place they were six years ago because they just rely on networking.

3) Another mistake I have seen from many entrepreneurs is not spending enough time on the creative process. Being creative takes time and you need to do that to create a message; regardless of medium, that is very compelling.

4) According to sales expert Jack Daly, selling is about the transfer of trust. One way to gain this trust is through your branding; in terms of trust in the B2B world, print outweighs online by a lot. 

Comments

[Jay Ehret]

Wow, Rob. I'm so glad to read what you said in #1. It's never all about one thing. There's nothing wrong with straddling the fence.

[Nancy Fox]

Rob, I appreciated your 4 key suggestions.
1. Agree totally
2. Yes
3.This applies to thinking about strategy as well. My conclusion: people aren't spending time on just "thinking" anymore - too busy doing
4.Not sure this holds true anymore. Trust can be built from an online connection that moves to a phone conversation, and then to a face to face meeting. For print to work well, has to be directed at very well thought out target audience. Can't tell you how much print collateral material I see clients/colleagues throw out without reading.

[Maria Marsala]

Rob

Regarding #1 - I used to say that the biggest mistake business owners made was to not have a plan... but truth is, you can't create a marketing plan if you don't know exactly who you're marketing, too!

Regarding #2 - I'd add "a 12-month monitoring system"

#3 - some of us, like me are better off hiring someone to take care of the creative stuff :)

#4 - Loved Mr. Daly's webinar, everyone should go find it!

[gene sower]

Have you been reading my blog for inspiration? http://samsonmedia.net/blog/widgets-twitter-blogging-oh-my-2.0/

Or do great minds think alike? (inspired by the Wizard of Oz, of course)

[social bookmarking]

keep coming

amazing work