Good Morning America’s Consumer Watch, details how many companies have gone to serving less, and charging the same or more …
Greedy Companies Serving Less and Charging More (Shame on you!)
Cheerios
How could you Cheerios? I grew up with you, from the honey nut, to the frosted, I’ve always supported you. Now you’re trying to trick me by cutting down your portions from 2 Weeks worth of cereal in a box to now only containing 12 days worth. You didn’t think I would notice, did you?
Cadbury Cream Eggs
Then there’s Cadburry eggs … you’ve always made me wonder how a bunny could lay an egg … confusing me with your wizardy.
Now your eggs are 25% smaller then last year’s. Honestly, I do think that’s a good thing, cus man, those eggs are intense. I usually end up taking a bite out of one them and then secretly hiding it somewhere for someone to find weeks later.
Brawny Paper Towels
Ah … Brawny. With your Chuck Norris lookalike manly man as your spokesperson. Genius. But now you’re 11 Feet shorter than your normal roll yet you still charge the same. House moms nationwide are furious. 11 feet! Do you know how much crap 11 feet of paper towel can clean up?
Now, even though I’m furious with these large companies and the impact this will have on their branding strategies, the funny thing that popped into in my mind while watching Good Morning America was;
“Wasn’t it just a two years ago that we were complaining that companies were forcing us to super size our portions, thus paying less for larger portions?”
I’m not simply pointing out the irony of how the winds change, I think it’s more than that. It really seems that size does matter when it comes to the brand, or rather more than size, it’s all about the promise. The promise that you haven’t changed.
People want to know that as they move through life, some things don’t change, no matter what the economic or social conditions, and I am sure the PR fall out of this latest sizing scandal will be that companies will either find a way to achieve their original sizing promise, or will lose loyalty largely to generics that offer consumers more for less during a faltering economy.
Now is a great time to remember what matters most to your consumers and cut whatever expenditure is unnecessary. Consumers will be heighteningly critical on portions with food prices increasing.
Rather than a large expensive marketing campaign, these brands should concentrate on a “viral content marketing” campaign that focuses on understanding these tough economic times, and how you can be their to provide value. Save those marketing dollars to keep your original promise, consumers will reward you.
‘Content Marketing’ Campaign Examples:
Recipes that are cheap and fast (Campbell’s Possibilities)
Multiple uses of the same product (Did you know that Pinesol was originally a mouth wash, disinfectant, and cleanser?, or that Heinz Vinegar can be used as a window cleaner?)
Fun ways to re-use existing packaging (science projects with the kids).
Ways you can make substitutions that add up to real flavor (Using Heinz Ketchup and spices to make a delicious marinade)
If you create content, in this case, recipes that incorporates your brand and makes people’s lives easier, you not only gain a great subliminal brand loyalty, but you completely differentiate yourself from the competition.
Are you looking for books about the American Dream? Looking to read about how someone has gone from nothing to something through hard work and perseverance?
Look no further.
There’s one book you should definitely read. It’s the epitome of the American Dream. It’s about a Plastic Surgeon in Pittsburgh named Dennis Hurwitz who had to overcome the murder of his own daughter and still keep his family together while advancing his career. It’s called The Chase for Beauty and it’s by author Robert Mendelson.
“How do you find beauty in life when you go to your own back yard and you are holding your daughter in your arms, and she is dead?”
-Robert Mendelson
Author, The Chase for Beauty
I think this is one of the best books you can ever read about “The American Dream” because it involves a lot more than the typical chase for riches in America, but more about the chase for beauty. Beauty involves not only financial success, but anything that makes you happy. Everything in Dr. Hurwitz’s life seemed to be beautiful … beautiful wife, beautiful career, beautiful home, beautiful daughter, and he brought beauty to other through his revolutionary plastic surgery procedures. It all seemed too perfect, until …
October 27, 1989
Dennis Hurwitz’s daughter, Karen was murdered in her own backyard by her best friend Mick. Mick used a Samurai Sword and his inspiration of the movie, Clockwork Orange. The story details many occurrences throughout Karen’s life that actually foreshadow her death as well.
Imagine being a parent of a daughter that is right about to go off to college and have her taken away from you forever. How do you cope? How do you move on? How are you supposed to find beauty?
Read the Chase for Beauty and discover how a family was able to overcome a personal tragedy of this magnitude. If Dr. Hurwitz can do it, we all can be inspired to appreciate life and find your motivation.
Dr. Dennis Hurwitz is a renowned Plastic Surgeon that created the world famous procedure called The Total Body Lift. Here’s a great video that explains this miraculous procedure that has helped many people look and feel a lot better about their appearance after a major surgery.
So remember, if you’re looking for books about The American Dream, make sure you read The Chase for Beauty.
This article has been broken down into 3 sections for your reading pleasure.
Choosing Keywords
Segmenting keywords with appropriate ads
Optimizing your landing page
But first, an intro …
Never before have you been able to get paying customers in 15 minutes. What a great world we live in where we can sit our asses at home and have the most targeted and trackable advertising at our fingertips. It’s awesome. But with this awesomeness comes a lot of riff raff …
Most Adwords Advertisers are Morons
The first thing you need to realize is that Google Adwords is open to anyone. That means, any fool can open an account, put their credit card on file, and start getting clicks and traffic right to their website. These fools, (which range from wasted corporate dollars to small entrepreneurs maxing out their credit cards) are known for overpaying for clicks, barely breaking even, and then abandoning their campaign to try something new online.
I estimate that 9 out of 10 people that use Adwords fall into this “fools” category … it takes months to learn how to use Adwords properly, but if you don’t have the time to learn it, here are the 3 most important things you can do to make your campaigns profitable on Adwords.
*These tips assume that you have some basic knowledge of Adwords and have conversion code placed in your website in order to track your success. If you don’t know what this means, stop reading this now and call me for a free Adwords consultation for your business.
Choosing Keywords - Stop Yappin’, Start Listenin’ and choose a lot!
Some call this “The Long Tail Approach to Keyword Selection.” Choose a lot of keywords right off the bat, and monitor them closely. It’s better to have more keywords than less, just make sure you’re being relevant for each keyword you choose. Don’t choose a keyword that has nothing to do with what you want to offer. If you want to attract patients to your dental office, don’t choose keywords for a beauty salon, just because you think people that go to a beauty salon will need dental services. Even though they might, it’s just not targeted enough, and your goal is to be as targeted and relevant as possible which will yield profitability, and higher rankings by Google, since Google rewards you for being relevant.
My favorite way to choose keywords is to interview 10 of your current customers (or potential, if you’re new) and sit there with a pen and paper, writing as many keywords down as you can. Be sure to ask your customers questions like:
What would you type in to find my business on a search engine?
How would you describe my business?
What do you love about my business?
What do you hate about my business?
Where do you hang out at online?
Where do you hang out at offline, (the real world)?
What did you think of the Britney Spears’s pregnant sister? (so that you don’t totally bore them!)
All you want to do is ask open ended questions. Don’t say a word, because you might sway them into thinking the way you think, and answer the way you want them to, which will just end up justifying the lousy keywords you’ve already chosen. Just shut the hell up and listen for once in your life.
So, as an example, let’s say I had a dental office in Pittsburgh … and I was looking for a wide range of keywords. I’d obviously come up with the following ones myself:
dentist pittsburgh
dentist in pittsburgh
pittsburgh dentist
dental work pittsburgh
pittsburgh dental work
Then I’d rely on the old Adwords selector tool to spit out a bunch more for me like:
Dentist pittsburgh pa
Pediatric dentist pittsburgh
Dentist in pittsburgh pa
Emergency dentist pittsburgh
Cosmetic dentist pittsburgh
Melnick dentist pittsburgh
Dentist craig street pittsburgh
Local targeted search keywords, like the following, should be included (making the ads pop up to people specifically in the pittsburgh area.)
find a dentist
cosmetic dentist
pediatric dentist
dentist office
dentist finder
dental veneers
teeth whitening
teeth bleaching
But this is what my competitors have already done, so why be on the same playing field as them? Chances are, my fellow dentists in Pittsburgh haven’t thought outside the box, and taken the time to interview customers to find the “long tail” keywords … which are keywords that individually, don’t add up to many searches, but as a whole, can add up to more searches then the generic keywords that are normally typed in. In other words, your long tail keywords group should be very, very long.
Phrases like these should be included in your long tail group:
how to choose a dentist
before and after dentist procedures
costs of dental procedures
cosmetic dentistry costs
price of bleech whitening
best dentist in pittsburgh
top dentists in pittsburgh
rankings for dentist in pittsburgh
So all in all, you’ve come up with a list of hundreds of keywords, thinking about every type of potential customer you can attract. Next week, we’ll discover how to group all of these keywords together in order to create relevant ads and relevant landing pages …
Joey Rahimi
Managing Director of Branding Brand
The Best Branding Firm in the World
If you’re the expert, customers will come knocking on your door. If you want successful marketing, you have to jump on new trends and do what your competitors aren’t doing.
Educational Marketing on the world’s most popular websites is that new trend. You can now leave your marketing footprints online, forever.
First, choose a topic you love … if you’re a salon owner, talk about hair care. If you’re a dentist, talk about keeping your teeth white and your breath fresh. Whatever business you’re in, there are topics that your potential customers care about and use the internet to research. People are also more willing to talk about you if you’re providing useful information. It’s online word of mouth, and it spreads fast.
Once we identify what you’ll be an expert in, there are many places online that we can target in order to get people to listen, check out your website, and then turn them into your life long customer.
Different websites offer different approaches to educational marketing, some more engaging than others, but all are worth getting your presence felt. The more places you call home on the Internet, the more likely people are to find you and your website. You should be using every opportunity available to you to show potential shoppers that you are a knowledgeable and trustworthy business person. Investing some time in marketing your business will pay off in sales.
The best websites to practice Educational Marketing are Amazon, Ebay, Craigslist, Myspace, and Facebook.
We’ll Do the Educating for You
At Branding Brand, we work hand in hand with our clients to ensure they are actively participating in Educational Marketing online.
Whatever topic we decide to pursue, we’ll learn everything we can about it by picking your brain and reading relevant books, trade journals, and other websites.
We’ll be your voice and participate in discussions and answer questions. When a difficult question or topic arises, we’ll discuss the answer with you first and then post it online. We’ll send you weekly progress of our efforts and you’ll have the ability to join in whenever you want to take a break from work.
Build Your Brand by educating your market
So remember, if you want to build your brand, you have to become the authority in your field. Once you’re the authority, sales happen. Now you just gotta stay at the top by executing an effective public relations campaign.
Joey Rahimi
Branding Brand, Managing Director
100 Fifth Avenue
Suite 316
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
joey@brandingbrand.com www.brandingbrand.com
Many CEOs would find it hard to be optimistic as they enter a new year marked by an uncertain economy, crazy political trends and new technologies that pose challenges to old business models.
But General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt seems very cheerful.
I attended the USA Today CEO Forum at CMU the other day, December 10 2007 to be exact, along with about 500 other CMU nerds … for what turned out to be a pretty good Q and A with Jeff Immelt.
Now, I could sit here and describe his entire 1 hour interview, or I can just cut the crap and highlight the key points.
Jeff Immelt -”Least Likely to Succeed”
One of Jeff’s early jobs was at Duncan Hines where he marketed Moist Brownie Mix or some shit like that, with a man named Steve Balmer, who is now the CEO of Microsoft. (what a tag-team) Immelt proclaimed in the interview that the two of them were probably voted the two employees that were ‘least likely to succeed.’ Sure you guys were.
GE growth comes from abroad
In 2007, for the first time in the history of GE, revenue outside the USA will surpass revenues inside the USA. Business outside the United States will grow between 15% and 20% next year. GE is a $172 billion company. In 2008, with the U.S. economy growing at 1.5%, they’ll grow revenue by 15%.
Rupert Murdoch - “I want to beat him so badly.”
Jeff admires Rupert, and claims he’s a rabid competitor of his. As far as trying to buy the Wall Street Journal, GE has no expertise in running a newspaper, so they’ll gladly pass that up. But as far as CNBC competing with Fox Business Network, CNBC wants to totally crush them. Jeff claims he’s got just as many tools as Rupert does, and then some. Yes sir.
Being a leader 10 to 20 years from now
Wanna be a leader? According to Jeff, here’s what you need.
Curiosity
Being good with people.
Perserverence.
Hard work
Thick skin
The rest of the interview … a no bullsh*t summary
GE screwed up by buying a subprime originator called WMC for $400 million, and writing off $800 million on the loss. Everybody makes mistakes, he said.
Jeff stays away from picking a presidential candidate.
GE takes credit for initiating the “going green” movement.
When running a large company like GE, bad news has to travel as fast as good news if you want to keep the company progressing.
China and India are where it’s at for the future. Watch out!
This is obviously the cliff notes version of this interview, but the answers to other lob ball questions were pretty much fluff, or just not interesting enough for me to write about.
You cook something until it becomes cooked.
You eat something until it comes Eaten.
You Brand something until it becomes a Branded, or, a Brand.
My definition of Branding is self explanatory.
It’s the new way to market. It’s the new way to get your message across using effective mediums that add value to your small business image. If you’re always adding value to your business, one day, you’ll be so juiced up with value that you’ll be the best in the world at what you do. By world, I mean city, or even street, for you ’small businesses’ out there.
Guess what happens when you’re the best on the block?
Now, I know you may think you’re already the best at what you do, but I’m talkin’ bout people in your area knowing you’re the best at what you do. When you’re the best, you’ve just turned your small business into a brand. Customers will choose you first from now on.
Branding is a subset of marketing.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. Branding is good marketing. Not just good marketing, but great, ethical, sexy, clear, and heroic marketing.
So how can you Brand your Small business without spending any money?
You’re gonna need 2 things:
1. Creativity, which you already have, because you’re an Entrepreneur! All Entrepreneurs are creative.
2. Writing Skills. You gotta know how to write If you don’t, post an ad on craigslist for a “Writing Internship” you are offering. Say it’s unpaid. Try and pick a college student that wants to help turn your business into a Brand. It’ll look great on his or her resume, trust me. If you need a job description, email me, I’ll write you one in a few minutes.
OK, so now it’s you, your writer, and your business. Now what?
Step 1 – Create your message
What are you the best in the world at? Choose 1 thing, and repeat it often in all of your messages. Whatever you choose, make sure your competition isn’t saying it. This is usually called the UVP – (unique value proposition) and there are entire books written on it. Your UVP should appear EVERYWHERE. (business cards, sign, letterhead, t shirts, etc.) Your UVP should always come out of your mouth too, whenever you talk about your business.
Here are some examples for very generic businesses that find it hard to stand out with a different message:
Fast Food Chinese
• Higher quality Chinese Food.
• We Speak English.
Beauty Salon
• Sophisticated styling
• The Salon for women on the go.
Dentist
• The comforting office.
• Where everybody knows your name.
Fashion Boutique
• We sell clothing for women serious about fashion
• Where powerful women shop.
Oh, and Make sure you’re able to Deliver! If you say you’re the best in the world at something, please make sure you actually are, or you’ll look like an idiot!
Step 2 - Offline Branding.
Give back! Speak about something that benefits the community. If you own a Fast Food Chinese Restaurant, give a cooking class once a month to an exclusive list of guests and show them how you prepare your delicious food. Give them some of your recipes, they’ll love you for it. Then go donate some of the food to the homeless with your attendees. Now that’s brand building.
Step 3 - Online Branding
Participate in online forums. Every business must make their presence felt in an online forum. Whether it’s about the city you’re in, or the industry, there are people talking, and more importantly, READING online forums to learn more. Jump on them, read what people are saying, and voice your opinion about the topic. End your post with your name and who you are.
Example:
“I completely agree with you about putting a stop sign on 5th and main. I drive by there several times a week and always tend to slow down on that corner because traffic coming perpendicularly seems to think I have a stop sign and that I’ll slow down. I haven’t seen an accident there yet, but it’s better safe than sorry.”
Kimberly
Kim’s Clothing Store
“For Women serious about fashion”
Now you’ve established a voice in the online community. You’re participating in forums where your customers are hanging out, and they remember you subliminally because you’ve said something insightful. Do this every day.
OK, so you’re ready for the big time. You just built some momentum by spending a few months
• identifying your UVP
• giving back to the community
• participating in online forums
Step 4 – PR
People are already talking about you. Now you wanna get the media talking about you. Whether it’s the local paper, radio station, or TV, you now have some street cred that you can leverage … now you hire a journalism major to write a press release about one of the cool things you are doing …
Notice something different about Branding?
No flyers, no billboard ads, no cheesy commercials, no pennysaver ads.
You’re building your brand. It will save you a lot more in dollars, but the sweat you put into it is tremendous. Think sweat equity when renovating your house yourself rather than paying an expensive contractor.
So I was walking in Oakland, right down the block from the University of Pittsburgh, and I noticed something really strange about this big ol’ Brontosaurus which was lookin’ right at me.
So, it has something to do with the public, and something to do with relations…
What Exactly is PR? Chances are, if you’ve looked at the websites of a few PR firms or searched for definitions, you’re at least slightly confused. What some people call marketing, others call public relations. And then there’s advertising. And publicity. And communications. And branding….
So what is PR, and how does it all fit together?
The truth is, the term public relations (PR) sounds broad because it can be: a public relations professional’s role is constantly changing, and they wear many hats. But don’t be confused: PR firms manage the public’s perception of a company.
Public relations professionals:
Write press releases and secure press coverage
Establish and maintain relationships with the media
Respond to press inquiries and speak to reporters
Organize news conferences
Create sales or marketing material
Secure speaking engagements
Write company newsletters
Write speeches and annual reports
Develop community outreach programs
Target and identify strategic audiences
Assist with crisis management
Conduct public opinion polls and focus groups
Communicate the company’s message to the public
Of all these functions …
PR is most commonly associated with media relations The process of establishing and maintaining relationships with the press and securing coverage for a business, whether in the form of articles, television, or radio segments. Unlike advertising, public relations allows for cost-effective, high-value placements that increase not just visibility, but credibility. Anybody can buy an ad, but only good PR can get an article in the New York Times.
Commit to public relations
It’s at the heart of every successful business. According to a Public Relations Gap III Study, “CEOs now believe that PR makes a greater contribution to organizational success than eight other common disciplines (Finance, Legal, Marketing, HR, Information Systems, Sales, Security, Strategic Planning).”
Manage the public’s perception of your business Public relations also allows you to raise awareness and work hand-in-hand with the media to spotlight the things your company has to offer. A good public relations professional promotes your business and establishes strong connections with the public through media relations, research and evaluation, corporate identity, conferences, outreach, and strategic planning.
Because good PR produces both short-term, as well as long-term results, it is critical to make public relations a consistent part of your business. In the end, good PR pays for itself.
So listen up Pittsburgh! If you have a business here, you need solid Public Relations to get your message out.
Hemingway’s Café in Pittsburgh A lot of people may not associate Hemmingway’s Café in Oakland with having spectacular bar specials, but the fact that you can get a beer for $1 every day of the week is why this bar ranks #5 for us. Let’s talk more about the place and the specifics. It’s right on Forbes Ave in the heart of Oakland. You can park in the 30 minute loading zone spots that are always free on the ends of every block on Forbes (30 minute loading zones from 9am-6pm).
Save Money
Come after work with a couple of bucks and a few friends, drink a few beers, and don’t tip. Pretend you’re French or something … too many people come in that they won’t remember you as a bad tipper anyway. On most nights, there’s this bitch (excuse my french) at the door. I call her Bitchy. She’s a legend. Don’t even think about messing with her, because she’ll eat you alive. As a matter of fact, be as nice as you can to her, she’s the gatekeeper at Hemingway’s. When you approach her after entering, she’ll scan your ID for a few minutes and rudely tell you to move along. But if you give her the slightest attitude, or make a funny face at your friend referring to how mean she is, you’re gone. She will not let you in.
The word on the street is that she hates good business and paying customers.
So back to the café … apparently, back in the day, Hemmingway’s used to be a hang-out spot for angry poets and chain-smoking bohemians … well, the “café” days are over and those hippies have migrated over to Lawrenceville, because the frat boys and sorority sluts have taken over … and the $1 beers are flowing like piss on St. Patrick’s Day.
OK, here’s the lowdown on the $1 beers:
Miller Light all day every day $1.
That’s right, cold, tasty, Miller Light, for you punks out there that don’t want to explore a different type of beer, you can always fall back on America’s favorite piss beer.
Here are the daily, $1 beer specials at Hemmingway’s Café. Monday – Harvest Moon
Tuesday - Yeungling
Wednesday – Blue Moon
Thursday – Circus Boy
Friday – Sunset Wheat
Saturday – Random
Sunday - Random
If these specials don’t make you happy, then you’re borderline crazy.
When my friends (yes, I have friends) come and visit from New York, I take them right into the heart of Oakland for these $1 beers to pre-game before we go out. It’s funny because tears come down their eyes since 6 beers at Hemmingway’s would get them one single beer in Manhattan.
Tryfinding a beer special like this in State College …
It don’t exist. Seriously, I asked, so don’t even try. Right, Aaron Wall?
We as Yinzers or outta tahners that now live here need to learn to appreciate places like Hemmingway’s. Stop thinkin’ you’re too old, too rich, or to cool for Hemingway’s, because you’re not. Just come in for an hour and chat it up with your friends or flirt with a college girl, you might even get lucky. Bottom line, come in with $3 crumpled dollar bills and walk out with a great buzz and maybe a new potential sex partner.
3911 Forbes Ave (next to that really shitty bar/club – boomerang’s)
412-621-4100
11am – 2am daily (now that’s some sick shit)
This bar review was written by ….
Cause Head
- a pretty good, (but not that good) friend of Branding Brand
Search Engine Optimization for small business is Pittsburgh.
What’s the #1 Business Mistake Online?
The answer is obvious, but most people, especially in Pittsburgh - miss it. It’s not being found on the first page of Google. Since Google accounts for nearly 65% of online searches, it’s important to prepare the SEO strategy for your small business around Google, which in turn will make your plan work for other search engines as well (Yahoo, MSN, AskJeeves, etc.)
What is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of arranging a website’s content in order to obtain high rankings in various search engines. They key word in this definition is content. The organization of the content is easy. So don’t let the computer geek SEO people out there fool you into thinking it’s some sort of mystery.
Content is king, if you’ve got good, sexy content, you need to organize it so that it shows up in search engine’s correctly. If you don’t have the content, the old saying now comes into play … “If you build it (the content) they will come!” Again, the content has to be GREAT, and if it is, other websites will link to you, which is the single most important factor in ranking well in search engines.
Why do I need SEO?
Wouldn’t you like to increase the amount of visitors to your website without paying much for it? Once you possess relevant content, it’s just a matter of ensuring that it is visible to search engines. If your content stays fresh and relevant, (which it should if you are trying to be in business forever), then the search engines will reward you by giving you high rankings and tons of free traffic!
There’s really no excuse for not doing search engine optimization. If you go through the daunting task of making a website, then the entire point is to have that website found by users. SEO is the process that can make that happen.
At Branding Brand, we’ve been able to do some great SEO for small business in Pittsburgh which have gotten them:
Increased Exposure You’ll get more leads, sales, media attention, buzz, word of mouth, and long term growth.
Highly targeted Traffic You’ll attract people that are actually looking for what you are offering. You know they’re looking for it because they typed in a keyword or phrase that’s directly correlated to your content.
More Credibility A higher result in an organic search leads to better branding and name recognition. Many people forget names of websites, but always remember what they typed in on google to find that page
What else should I know about SEO?
We realize that SEO is not a mystery or a system that will trick the search engines into bringing you more traffic. SEO starts with content, flourishes with the proper arrangement of the content, and ends with tons of organic traffic from users that are benefiting from your content.
Beware of the “niche” SEO firms that claim they can implement a successful SEO campaign without addressing your issue of relevant content. Search Engine Optimization is a continuous process that can take 3-6 months to see results (more traffic):
Typically, an SEO firm should do the following for you:
Learn everything about your business and customers in order to optimize your most relevant content and then determine what content needs to be written immediately to attract even more traffic.
Develop a list of as many keywords and phrases as possible that potential customers would most likely type in a search to find your business. We’ll then assist you in producing relevant content around these keywords and phrases.
Analyze your competition and develop a strategy to only compete for certain keywords and phrases when the battle can actually be won.
Write & Distribute articles to other websites that could benefit from your content in exchange for linking to your website.
Perform persuasive online copywriting on the individual pages of your website in order to ensure that your potential customers take action!
Create Viral videos for you that will get your website lots of link love and your business lots of buzz.
SEO is one of the most influential online marketing mediums there is and it’s vital to the success of any business in Pittsburgh. SEO done correctly (and ethically), can enable you to be found and ranked well in the sea of billions of existing web pages.
Remember, it all revolves around relevant content – Content truly is King!
