This blog post is one in a series of eight articles that explore the most important characteristics of a strong leader. These articles are linked to a Prezi visual presentation, which you can view here.

You - the Primary Brand Builder

Strong brands are a direct reflection of strong leadership. Just like your physical health and outward appearance are a direct reflection of what you eat, how you care for yourself, and your state of mind, so is your brand a direct reflection of your culture, your investment in your people and your customers, and the disciplines you follow to maintain a healthy, positive, innovative company. So your role as the primary brand builder for your business is one of your most important responsibilities.

I like to refer to brand (as a concept) as a promise, but more importantly, it’s a promise kept.  A brand is the shorthand for an identity.  We can't completely control our identity, because we can't control the customer’s perception of the brand. But we can greatly control perceptions through consistency.  If everything you do in your business - from the way you speak to one another to the way you put tape on your shipments or bows on your bags - is consistent with your brand identity, then your customers will learn to trust your brand.

The type of consistency that leads to brand trust comes from being consistent from person to person and from message to message within your organization.  This can only be achieved when it is cultivated, fostered, and modeled by strong leaders. The leader's job is to set the vision and constantly reinforce the understanding of and attachment to that vision throughout the organization. The more clarity your organization shares about your vision and goals, the better your people - and therefore your operations, marketing, sales, training, manufacturing, and planning - will align themselves to achieve that vision. Clarity leads to alignment, alignment leads to consistency, consistency leads to trust, and trust equals brand.

Take some time to reflect on the things you do to strengthen your brand. Identify areas in which you are undermining your brand or simply not paying attention to it. Your company is making promises every day - in the form of behaviors, messages, visuals, and services, and in every type of communication from face-to-face interactions to social media. The importance of your role as brand builder cannot be overstated.

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Welcome to this presentation of big business brand Small Business Budget. In the next hour, I'll be showing you how to take your precious cash and time and maximize them through an effective branding process. During this presentation, I'd like you to keep one word in mind. Leverage. First, I quickly introduced myself, I am the owner of Hill Management Group. My name is Andrea Hill. My company has four brands serving small business owners StrategyWerx, which provides strategy consulting SupportWerx (renamed WerxMarketing in 2016), which provides marketing services, MentorWerx, which is engaged in professional development and JewelryWerx, which is a news site for small business owners in the jewelry industry.

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I've spent most of my career as a fix it specialist for ailing companies and I've been the president and or CEO for companies ranging in the 45 million to 600 million dollar a year revenue ranges, including companies like Rio Grande in the jewelry industry and Fulcrum Direct, which had several catalogs in the apparel industry. Over the years, I've developed considerable expertise in the strategies that facilitate growth and profitability. I am known for my marketing and branding successes, and all of the companies I've run have been marketing and branding intensive.

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In 2007, I left my last corporate post to form my own company because I wanted to take what I had learned over the years and bring it to small business owners so that they could compete more effectively in our increasingly boundaryless world.

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So let's get started before you can achieve a compelling big business brand on a small business budget, you have to understand what a compelling big business brand is. So here's what we'll learn today. First, you may be surprised by how many people don't really know what a brand is. So we'll be covering the meaning of brand and how that meaning has changed over the last 50 or so years. Next, we'll review the building blocks of Brand so you can make a plan for how to get all your own building blocks in place.

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Once you know what to do to create a brand, we can start discussing how to express the brand. We'll discuss how to get the biggest bang for your marketing buck by fine tuning the ways you express your brand through all of your media personnel and service exposures. And I'll show you how to maximize your brand exposure using the most powerful tools of our times. So let's get started. Start by thinking about this, what is a brand? Is it an identity, is it a perception?

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Is it an investment, a promise or all of the above? If you said all of the above, then you're absolutely right. A brand is all of these things. The first aspect of brand is its expression of identity, a roll of toilet paper isn't just toilet paper, it's comfort. Soft toilet paper cheese isn't just any cheese, it's Sargento cheese. The concept of branding goes back to when cattle ranchers grazed their herds from the pastures in the west to the meat markets in Chicago.

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Even if a cow got away from the herd, the ranchers brand on the cow identified the owner of that brand.

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For many years, that's all a brand was - it was an identity mark, then in the 70s and 80s, brands took on more meaning because company brands took on more power versus the brand being associated primarily with products. And now a brand is even more pervasive. Brands today speak to the character, the cool factor and the identity, not only of the companies that have them, but also of the customers who affiliate with them. Brand has changed a lot since it was just a burn mark on a cow.

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I'm willing to bet you remember your first kiss, just stop and think about it for a moment, you may have had some amazing kisses since that first one. You may have been kissing the same person for thirty five years now, but nothing will replace the memory of that first kiss from its stronghold. In your mind, it was first and it made a big impression to business thinkers that I admire. Al Reis and Jack Trout once wrote that a brand is getting first into your prospects mind representing a clear perception, first into your prospects, mind representing a clear perception.

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That doesn't mean just first, because if your first but you don't bring a clear perception, you don't stick. And it doesn't just mean giving customers a clear perception. You have to be the first with that clear perception. A long time ago there was a first in place advantage. For instance, if there was already a general store in a small town, it made little sense to open up another general store nearby. Later, there was a first mover advantage, but the Internet and emergent technologies have reduced the barrier to entry for almost every sort of business.

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So first mover advantage isn't what it once was. Now what we're left with is first impression advantage. But it's not just a first impression. It's to be first into your prospects. Mind representing a clear perception. If your brand is saying the same things that the other brands, your competitor brands are saying, then you won't be first and your brand won't benefit from a clear perception. You'll be all the other copy machines after the Xerox. So you have to define for your brand what your clear perception should be.

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You want to be your customers first kiss. To demonstrate the point of stickiness, I always like to ask audiences whether or not they like the following things and I usually ask for a show of hands. Do you like escargot or dim sum, softshell crab, overeasy eggs or all of the above when I'm doing this presentation with a live audience. Very few people like all four and not one of these things will get all the hands raised in the audience.

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But do any of these foods suffer for lack of an enthusiastic audience? Not at all. The point is that you don't need all the customers. You just need the right customers. Escargot has a customer base that's different than the overeasy eggs customer base. They likely have some overlap, but they're not the same. You must figure out who your customer base is and then convey your brand and its unique perception to that base. You are creating fans for the idea of what you have to offer even before they become consumers of what you have to offer.

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You need a flavor and an enthusiastic diner. One without the other is insufficient. But when you put the two together, that's what makes a brand sticky to demonstrate the power of stickiness. Are any of you craving any of these things now that you've thought about them? That's what happens when a brand is sticky to a particular group of people. You can easily trigger their interest and enthusiasm.

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Sticky is awesome. People often tell me I can't afford to be a brand, brands are expensive and I don't have the money to make that kind of investment. They are partially right. Brands are expensive. They can be expensive in dollars. For instance, if you want to be a theme park producer and go up against Walt Disney, you must have a Disney esque marketing and brand budget. Even brands that aren't Disneyesque will require some financial investment. But the investment that isn't as obvious to most people is the investment of time, energy and discipline.

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To be a successful brand, you have to execute on all the things I'll speak of today. That is a significant investment and it never stops. You harvest the benefits of each effort and immediately plant again for the next. So a brand is an identity, a brand is a perception, a brand is sticky. A brand is an investment. And a brand is a promise. Or more important, it's a promise kept. A brand can evolve and progress over time, but it must have some principles and values at its core to which it always stays true.

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Once you make those commitments to your customers, you must keep them and continue to build on them. There is no such thing as a brand that is a flash in the pan. Some exciting business ideas and products come and go, but to be a brand you must have staying power. And to have staying power, you must make and keep a commitment to your core customers. Now that we've talked about what a brand is, we'll get into the building blocks of a brand which include your secret sauce, your graphical elements and your offering of services and products.

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Before you can do any successful marketing, you have to be really clear on your strategic elements. This is what I call the secret sauce of your business strategy is all about differentiation and competitive advantage. Differentiating alone is not enough and competitive advantage alone is not enough. You must have both. You also can't be strategic with just one element. Even if you sell the coolest thing in the world, there is no such thing as a silver bullet product strategy. You still must wrap other elements around it, like the way you sell your intimate knowledge of the people you sell to your amazing service offerings.

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The type of knowledge and information you share with your customer base or the things you do for your customers that keep them coming back. It's outside the scope of this session to teach you how to do that work. But assuming you have done it, you need to distill your strategic secret sauce into three primary messages who you are, why you matter and what makes you different. These messages will be the foundation of every marketing thing you do. And I mean every there is so much noise in the world today that it's terribly difficult to penetrate it and get consumer or business owner attention.

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If you come out with a different sounding and feeling message every time, you'll never have any impact. Why? Because you have to register on a potential prospect's radar 20 to 50 times before they make a meaningful mental note of who you are and start to pay attention. So if you go out there with four different messages, then you've expanded the impressions you need to make to 80 to 200 times 10 different messages, which is not uncommon, by the way.

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Then you have to hit them 200 to 5000 times. So be compelling, but also be consistent. That's why you need to know your secret sauce.

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Once you know your secret source, who you are, why you matter and what makes you different, then you can start to create these elements of your brand, your core values, your words that matter, your color palette and your typography. Are you surprised that I didn't say logo? Many people perceive that the logo is a primary brand element. Actually, while the logo is very important, it's a secondary brand element. It's a design element. In fact, you can't even create the logo successfully and by successfully, I mean consistently with the brand unless you have defined and adopted these four brand elements.

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First, let's start by talking about your core values. Your core values are a distilled version of your secret sauce. They provide the basis for all your brand messaging. For some companies, the core values statement is a set of bullet points. For others, it's a paragraph or even six paragraphs. Now, if the core values take more than a page to express, you're probably saying too much work on editing it down to the most meaningful and compelling aspects of your secret sauce.

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This may seem like a philosophical element, but it's really a very tactical element. Once you define your core values, you must make sure that every single thing you do from the services you offer or choose not to offer to the greeting on your business phone to the user experience of your website and yes, to the messages you put in any advertising and promotion. You must make sure all of these things conform with your core values and express those values. Clearly, the message in a bottle analogy is a good one.

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If you put a message in a bottle, you have limited room to express yourself. One page, maybe two. It's certainly not a novel. The message must clearly express where you are and what you need. Most of the time when you are expressing your brand, you will be doing it in bite sized elements. You have to make sure that the cumulative effect of all those elements is a clear understanding, a clear perception of your brand. The core values form the foundation for all that work.

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Once you've defined your core values, you can develop a limited list of words that matter, what you see on the screen is the StrategyWerx list of words that matter. These are all directly derived from our core values. Words are at the heart of all marketing and promotion. If you don't know the words, you can't develop the graphics. In fact, an advertisement that is pure graphics will only work if there were very, very clear words behind it and if the graphic was designed or selected based on the words the advertiser wanted to convey.

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In some ways, the words that matter are just another distillation of your secret sauce. You take the secret sauce and turn it into a core value statement, and then you take the core value statement and you distill it again into words that matter. This is how important your secret sauce is. If you want to create a clear perception of your brand, then you must express the same ideas over and over and over again. Note that all the words that matter or the words in the words that matter graphic from StrategyWerx have equal weight.

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That's because our biggest ideas are small business and answers. Our next biggest words are strategy. Experts experience and succeed. And right behind those ideas we have support and advice. And then we have a lot of other supporting ideas like seminars, education, inspire profit and methods. Every employee of StrategyWerx has those words that matter posted in a highly visible place in his or her workspace. We produced a high quality image. We laminated it and it gets distributed to everyone.

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It's framed right at the front of my desk. So I see it every time I look up. This kind of constant brand awareness leads to the consistency that is essential to being sticky with your target customers and with keeping your brand promise.

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After you have your words that matter figured out, then you move to typography, typography is an art form and it should not be taken lightly. A font can express a lot of ideas, seriousness, playfulness, productivity, sensitivity. And if you do the work, you can find fonts that express the ideas in your words that matter a few things you must consider when selecting typography for your brand. First, you have to use easily readable, understandable fonts, fonts that work both in print and on the web.

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Now, this will eliminate a lot of fonts right out of the chute. Next pick no more than two fonts and then stick with them for everything. I know this can be hard. If you like fonts at all, you probably really like messing around with them and picking fun fonts to express different ideas. But from now on, there is only one idea your brand and you must express that idea singularly. This means that you choose fonts that work for your big idea and you use the same ones for all your small ideas.

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I happen to be a big font lover. I love being able to pick fonts for other companies because I don't get to pick any more fonts for mine because clarity and trustworthiness and consistency are such an important part of our brand. We picked a super simple, clear font as both our headline and our body font and it's open sans. And now we just use that thought for everything. It can take a while to select your typography. A good process involves trying a lot of different fonts in different combinations and in your various messages and graphics.

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Your graphic designer will help you with this part of the process. If you can express the ideas that the typography needs to show, then a good graphic artist will understand the thoughts that are available to express those ideas.

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And again, once you make it, your typography selection should be used in everything, even the typeface of your email. Remember, you are seeking to create a singular, consistent brand image. So if it's in type, it's in your typeface. Your brand also requires a color palette. This palette is the StrategyWerx palette, and every company's palette is different. Believe it or not, the palette will also come from your core values and your words that matter.

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That's how consistent you want to be. The field of psychology has given us lots of information about how people respond to colors and what colors mean to people. There's no such thing as a universal truth about a color, and there are definitely cultural differences and influences in how we view color. But these good, broad guidelines are better than no guidelines at all. To select your palette, you take what you know about your brand and you think about how those words and messages would be best expressed in colors.

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And it's not just color, it's saturation and hue and tonality. A palette typically requires four or five colors to be expansive enough to cover all a brand's bases. For instance, the primary colors of our brand are the blue and green you see on the left. But well, here's a good example. In this PowerPoint presentation, the blue was too dark and the green was too light to be effective as the major colors. So the orangey brown was perfect to anchor the presentation and the red would have been obnoxious.

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It's just a highlight color. You must also be very specific in your color selection. Anyone who does marketing or graphics for you once you've selected your color palette, has to have the HTML, RGB and communicate color codes for each of the colors in your palette. The usage has to be precise or it won't be your brand color. And now maybe you can see why the logo should be developed after the primary brand elements are developed, you need to know your values so you can decide upon your words and messages and then your typography and then your colors.

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And then the logo will make sense and it will be powerful within the context of those elements. If you have a known logo, I'm not a big fan of rushing out to change a known logo. If you've already built brand equity, by which I mean recognition into your logo, then changing it could do more harm than good in cases like that. What we do is look at ways to tweak the existing logo to keep it as close as possible to the logo that they already know.

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You may want to change the font of a subtext that always runs with your logo or modify the color of the logo, but leave the graphics the same. Just keep in mind there are ways of making adjustments for a known logo that don't have to involve a complete do over. Now, if you do not have known equity in your logo, this is a great time to actually design the logo that goes with your brand elements. And you'll find that that design process will go much better than any previous logo design process, as you've been through, because you will actually know what makes sense and what doesn't.

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And that's it. These are the elements of your brand, your core values, your words that matter, your typography and your color palette. So now let's talk about the last two building blocks of your brand, which is services and products. If your services, communication style and engagement practices aren't in alignment with your brand strategy, then even a one hundred thousand dollar brand package from one of the hottest New York branding agencies won't help you. For instance, if your brand words say warm, supportive service and caring, but your service policy doesn't allow for returns that are at least as generous as your competitors, that's brand dissonance.

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If your brand colors say bright, enthusiastic, innovative, energetic, but your receptionist answers the phone like this. Good afternoon. Thank you for calling Energetic People, Inc.. That's brand dissonance. If your brand suggests that you are communicative and interested in your customers, but you never, ever respond to their comments on social media, that's brand dissonance. It's also really bad social media practice test every type of customer interaction from your service policies to your sales approaches and including the way your staff dresses and presents itself outside your business at industry events and networking.

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In fact, if you've ever struggled with a business attire policy, having your brand nailed down will help you with that. Use your brand to define it. If your brand says casual, hip and earthy, but you're making your staff wear nylons and suits, that's brand dissonance. On the other hand, if your brand says formal luxury, high end, you can explain the attire requirement within the context of your brand. So as you can see, every way in which you interact with your customers through services and sales, engagement is part of your brand.

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And all of those things need to be consistent with the brand. Now, you probably got into business because you knew how to make or acquire something that you could sell, most likely you have a passion for that thing. And if you're a passionate product sort of person, then it's possible that your passions are also evolving over time. It's also possible that you become bored with one thing and get excited about another. If you want your business to survive and your brand to thrive, you must ensure that your product development evolves in a consistent manner with your brand.

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It doesn't mean that you won't have opportunities for change, but it does mean that you have to manage change within your brand boundaries. You also have to ensure that every product you release fulfills the promise of your brand. In the software world, there are software companies that are known for putting out products on the bleeding edge of technology. It's OK with their customers if they have bugs in their product releases because it's the promise of the bleeding edge that is so exciting to their target buyers.

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On the other hand, if SAP, which is a leading business operation software provider, puts out a product with bugs that makes their customers crazy, SAP doesn't promise to be bleeding edge. Their brand promise is to be reliable and stable and steady so their customers can focus on running their businesses. If your brand promises to be stylish, then it's not OK if your designs are dragging behind fashion trends by two or three years. On the other hand, if your brand is about being timeless, then you better not be trendy.

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Use your brand to guide and focus your product development and then test every product against your brand. This will help you maintain consistency in your brand promise. And interestingly, it will also introduce you to exciting opportunities for innovation that you may not have otherwise considered. And there you have it, the building blocks of your brand are your secret sauce, the elements of core values, words that matter, typography and colors, your services and engagement and your products.

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Now that you know how to put your entire operation together in a tight little brand package, let's start talking about execution. The first thing we do is a brand inventory, and there's a there are three steps in a brand inventory. The first step is your marketing materials. Now, if you look at this diagram on the right, you'll see that lead generation is coming from public speaking social media. Your telephone, outbound phone calls inbound, answering direct mail, advertising, email articles, press releases, things that aren't on there, include your website, paid Internet advertising.

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Even on a small business budget. You must include most, if not all of these various media types in your marketing strategy. And most of you probably already do. So for step one of your brand inventory, you gather together all of your marketing materials, advertisements, packaging postcards, flyers, brochures and even print screens of your Web pages and any Internet advertising you do. Don't forget your Facebook, Twitter, Twitter, Google Plus, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, page headers, not everything that you have in there, but at least the page headers for your page.

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What spread them all out in front of you. Just get a big conference table and spread everything out. And what most people discover at this point is that there is a lot of variation. Make a to do list, make it to do list of every change you need to make to get your marketing materials all lined up with your brand elements. This includes your colors, your graphics, your fonts, and particularly your messages and voice. You may not have time to do all of them right now.

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You may not have the budget to do all of them right now, but make your to do list so that you can start picking them off one at a time. The time is going to go by anyway. So it would be much better to get six months down the road and find you finally got everything put together then to be six months down the road, still thinking about the fact that you need to do it. So step one of your brand inventory is to gather all of your marketing materials and identify what changes you need to make to start presenting a consistent brand presentation.

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The second step in your brand inventory is your physical environment, you're basically going to do the same thing with your physical environment. You're going to walk through it with a highly critical eye, make sure that every element from the colors and displays that the customers see to the work area and the messages and posters on your walls, things that influence employee attitude to the way that your shop is set up or your back room is set up and what it says about your feelings about quality.

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Make sure every single thing in your physical environment is in sync with your brand elements. And again, if there are things that need to be brushed off, touched up, replaced or changed, make your to do list that you can start working your way through it over time. And step three of your brand inventory is the atmospherics. Now you're going to spend some time listening, mostly listen to the way you answer the phones, listen to the way you talk to the customers and even the way you talk to each other, what music is and is playing, not just the music that's out for the customers to hear, but also the music that's playing in your shop.

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How does your environment smell? Are there any tactical elements in the environment, you know, surfaces somebody might run their hand across or chairs that they would sit in. Consider how every single atmospheric element does or does not contribute to your brand and once again, make a checklist of things that you're going to touch up, brush off, change, replace whatever you have to do to get your atmospherics in line with your brand.

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Now, you may think I'm still telling you stuff about how to make a brand and wondering when will I get to the part about how to do it on a small business budget? But that's exactly what I've been doing so far. Remember, I asked you to think about the word leverage at the beginning of this presentation? If you want to maximize your brand impact on a small budget, you need leverage. You need to make sure that every single tiny detail is in sync, optimized and maximized before you pay for even a five dollar Facebook post to different theater.

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Troupes could put on a production of rent. They could be using the same exact script, the same costumer and their performers could have equal innate talent. But it's the troupe that manages every little detail before the curtain ever opens that's going to have a terrific production. When you manage every little detail of your brand through a brand audit, you're maximizing your brand and marketing budget. And as I said before, you may not be able to afford to make every change you want or need to make right away.

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But with your punch list, you can make those changes as the dollars come available because you'll know where your priorities are. Sound simple? Well, it's definitely not rocket science, and yet it works miracles. The only reason I can think of that, more companies don't do this aspect of branding to a level of distinction is that it takes a lot of discipline, which is also a lot like doing a stage production. Now it's time to talk about some exciting tips and tricks to magnify your exposure.

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When it comes to getting press coverage, it's often a case of who wore it better. Editors are inundated with press requests and they must make choices that fit with their editorial direction and add value to their publication. Now, a magazine like US magazine may get a certain amount of benefit from showing the don'ts, but your trade editors never want to make you look bad. So the first rule of thumb is to have your act together since you've done a brand audit.

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You can be confident that everything the editor sees about you represents one unified, streamlined, well-dressed story and that will get her attention. What will keep her attention is the story itself. Editors see tons and tons of new this and knew that, but they don't always have good editorial angles to work. There's really only so much room for pretty pictures, but you can do the work for her. You see, you figured out who you are, why you matter and what makes you different.

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And it's that information that makes press releases come alive. Try to make your press communications feel like a serial novel. Each installment should build on your brand story. You'll maximize your editorial appeal and you'll offset some of the dollars you would otherwise have to spend on advertising. When it comes to advertising, layering is required to be successful layer after layer after layer of consistent messages that culminate in one strong brand awareness. McDonald's has always been the genius of this.

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I mean, come on, it's not like the food is all that good, but they have a powerful brand.

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First, they trained us to look for the golden arches and they did that for years. Then in the 1970s, they got harried moms to look at them as a time and sanity saver. And today we're just loving it. They may run thousands of little product ads and promotions, but they always have one main vein of promotion running. That careful, consistent, memorable theming is what turned McDonald's into the powerhouse brand they are today. Now, their marketing department probably gets sick of it long before we as consumers do.

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And there's a reason that they continue with this method today because they know that no matter how big you are, you have to be repetitive and consistent to make your message stick. Even McDonald's doesn't get a silver bullet. I used to be the CEO of Rio Grande Jewelry Supply when I got there in 1996. They enjoyed very little brand recognition outside their immediate region. We changed several things during those first few during all my years there. But the main change was that we stopped advertising every laser welder earring back and hand tool.

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Instead, we started advertising the brand. Because when you're advertising a bunch of little products and we had 30000 to choose from, we never created one cohesive message. So when we advertised the brand, we started getting brand awareness outside the region and we didn't just advertise the brand. We advertise the brand as a friend to designers and our brand awareness grew exponentially. If you want to create exposure to increase your exposure through advertising, then make every single exposure work for you as a player in a greater whole.

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Why spend 20 exposures making twenty different impressions when you can spend 20 exposures and have it all add up to one clear perception? Now, it's tempting when you're speaking to your industry or trade to abandon the brand messages, you directed consumers and go for more tactical messaging, but don't do it. Hold steady with your brand in everything you do from your signage to your terms and conditions and purchase order forms and everything in between. There are two reasons for this.

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First, the people buying for businesses are also consumers, and the same psychology affects them even if their spending behavior is ultimately different. And second, when retail stores buy into your brand, they'll be far more successful with selling your products if they become another piece of your consistent brand messaging. So your brand has to be clear to them so they can help you carry it through. Now, let's talk about moving your brand into the Internet, don't make the mistake of thinking that if something is on the Internet, it's social because we're going to really focus on social.

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But it's two different things. This diagram by Forrester Research illustrates the various channels or media that you have for marketing, and the ones in blue are specifically the ones that are social. So here are some things on the Internet that are definitely not social or which may not be social. Search is not social. Your website may not be social, but it should be. Please go to my website and grab the free video called Changed. The way you think about social media, it's in the community section.

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Under videos, you'll get a much deeper discussion of this Internet advertising that would be paid search and banner ads. Those are only social if you design them to be social. And if you have a mobile app, it could be social, but it's not necessarily social. For the not social elements of the Internet, the rules for increasing your exposure are the same as what I've already covered for PR and advertising. Carry your consistent theme through on every Internet element.

[00:37:50.740]
And again, make sure you're using a good mix of all the elements available to you. A lot of people think that a social media strategy alone is sufficient for marketing and branding, but it's not. We are going to talk a lot now about social media and how you can use it to expand your brand exposure, but it's not on its own sufficient. OK, so it isn't social that your opportunities to expand your expand your brand of change up a bit.

[00:38:21.280]
Social media is the Wild, Wild West and consumers on social are influencing brands as much as brands influence consumers. And they present some exciting opportunities for small business. But it also introduces challenges. For the most part, small businesses aren't making huge mistakes in social media. Rather, they're just being sort of met. There's a social media game to be played, but most small business owners haven't really joined it yet. Everything we've talked to up until now has set you up for consistent, interesting, sticky branding.

[00:38:56.110]
So now let's talk about using social media to take it to the next step. If you just do social media without all the preparation we've already discussed, your social media efforts will be weak and lame. You need the foundation of messaging we've discussed to pull off the sort of social media efforts that lead to genuine brand awareness.

[00:39:19.270]
The exciting thing about social media is that it can expose you to hundreds of thousands of potential customers, customers that you wouldn't have been able to reach in previous decades without spending money on prime time television advertising. But it's not magic and it doesn't happen overnight. You have to work each social media channel effectively to have it pay off in brand awareness. Now, what does effectively mean?

[00:39:46.690]
First, it means you'll be staying within your brand elements. Your voice is particularly important in social media because much of what you communicate will be in writing. And yes, images are a very big part of social media, but your voice plays a powerful role. If you speak out of voice, then you lose the thread of the impression that you're making. Don't waste your breath. Stick with your brand voice. Second, it means that each social media channel has its own conventions.

[00:40:17.590]
That's true in traditional media as well. For instance, you don't write a novel on a billboard. I mean, you could, but it won't work. And in radio you have to go with very tight and interesting scripting to get a big message across in a very short period of time without having people space off. So every media has its own conventions. I don't know that social media's conventions are so much different than traditional media, but people aren't as familiar with the conventions yet.

[00:40:44.770]
If you don't take the time to understand them again, you'll be spinning your wheels and wasting time and money on your social media efforts. So let's talk about how to maximize your social media exposure and how to play within those conventions and really expand your brand awareness. Now, since we're talking about building a brand on a budget, one of the most important things you can do is spread brand awareness far and wide. And like I said, it's possible to do that on social media, but it doesn't happen by itself.

[00:41:18.850]
So first, we'll review which social media environments you need to be in. We'll talk about some alternatives you might want to be in, and I'll review the main ways to build audience in the top environments and also how to maximize the value of that audience once you have their attention.

[00:41:35.980]
Here's your minimum. If you are a product seller in a luxury goods industry or in any consumer goods industry, really you need to be in these five categories. This is true if you're selling wholesale or if you're selling retail. Now, why these five Facebook and Twitter are your bare minimums for social media? They're the big kahunas of both lead generation and engagement. LinkedIn is the place where executives who aren't social media driven hang out. If you want to get the attention of business owners, you need to be on LinkedIn.

[00:42:09.850]
If you're thinking this doesn't apply to you, if you're a retailer, then think again. You want the attention of the heavy hitters in your community and they are also on LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram give you powerful exposure for your product images. What you sell is always highly visual, and Pinterest and Instagram can get your images in front of more eyeballs. So now let's talk about some of these environments and how to get the most out of them. You've probably seen something like this before.

[00:42:40.270]
I know there are versions for donuts and hamburgers, but I like seeing it in the context of jewelers. It's funny, but it also gives you really useful information because it helps you quickly focus on the essence of each platform. So you'll probably want to come back to that again. And if you want just a copy of this graphic, if you go to Twitter and look at the hashtag #jckAndrea, you'll be able to find it there as well or link to it.

[00:43:15.590]
First, let's talk about being social. You know, it's not social getting followed by people and not following them back, you know what else isn't social putting post after post of things you want to sell, but never looking at anybody else's stuff. Forgetting to thank people when they share your posts is not social. Forgetting to share other people's content is not social. Putting up a post that is made entirely of hash tags and hurts the eyes is not social.

[00:43:44.750]
In other words, use your manners. And it's not just because Emily Post says to social media is kind of like social. Anything else. If you're the person who only talks about himself at parties who expect people to pay attention to him but doesn't pay attention to anyone else and who doesn't find other people interesting, then you're not going to have many friends. Right. They'll glaze over when you start talking and wander off to hang out with someone more interesting.

[00:44:10.940]
Social media is the same way. If you want to get the benefits of social media, you have to remember to use your manners and be social. Now, does this mean you won't encounter doofuses and trolls out on social media? Yes, you will. And you'll probably block them or ignore them. They're not getting any business out of it. And maybe that's not even what they're there for. Remember to be social and follow these polite conventions and you'll create a lot more engagement and awareness on social media.

[00:44:41.350]
Let's start with Facebook. Facebook can be very challenging to build audience in. It's much harder, in fact, than Twitter, but there are more people there. So you really want to build your audience and Facebook. It can be done, but you have to pay some real good attention to it. Now, I do say this with a caveat. Less and less page content is making it to followers. In fact, we believe at this point it may be as little as one to two percent of organic content is making it to your followers.

[00:45:12.430]
So if you only have a thousand Facebook fans, then only 10 to 20 of them will ever see your page posts. Obviously, that's not worth the effort. So to make your Facebook pay, you have to build your audience. And most people that are getting good engagement that leads to sales on Facebook have 25 to 35000 followers. The primary way to build your audience on Facebook is by a combination of inviting people to your page and sharing interesting content.

[00:45:43.840]
It's both as simple and as difficult as that. You can use Facebook custom audience to build your page fans. This feature allows you to upload all the contacts in your contact database to a Facebook ad page. And what Facebook does with the data is they compare it to all the email addresses already in their system. Facebook matches your customer data with current Facebook members, many of whom are not likely to be following your page yet. And then you're able to send a Facebook ad to all the members of your custom audience and invite them to like your page.

[00:46:19.450]
Now, those your list is not shared with anyone else other than Facebook. Facebook has your customer list. So that's the thing you have to think about. But it does allow you to take a very targeted audience of people and invite them to participate with you in a social environment where they'll get more engagement than they're probably getting right now from you. Facebook is also a terrific platform for hosting incentives and contests and games. You can use a simple tool called Short Stack to create Facebook apps for about thirty dollars a month.

[00:46:51.670]
You can build as many games, contests and interactive experiences as you want, and they have almost 100 premade templates. Again, that product is called Short Stack. Make sure that many of these interactive experiences ask for an email address. So tell the customer, hey, we have this game or this contest or, you know, rate the picture, whatever it is, vote on the design. But to participate, they have to give you an email address, which, of course, you're going to put in your contact management system so that you can email these customers and talk with them in other forums as well.

[00:47:27.370]
A few housekeeping things you can do to build your Facebook following is to make sure you have your Facebook link in your email signature and also a Facebook like button on your website. And finally, get creative with other Facebook page owners. Find a page owner with a similar clientele to yours and do a cross promotion with them. You encourage your followers to follow them. They encourage their followers to follow you. And you guys both offer some sort of incentive to the two groups.

[00:47:56.680]
So there's no magic here. There was no wizardry. It's just work. But if you're putting out messages that are very consistent with your voice and you're using similar colors and similar imagery, every time you go out there, then you're going to build impressions faster than if you were doing lots of random things.

[00:48:17.350]
And that combination of building impressions faster and really working on building your Facebook audience will get you a broader audience to communicate with. And obviously more people who know your brand.

[00:48:33.980]
Twitter is different than Facebook, it's more active you it's very difficult to over tweet, but you can definitely over Facebook. You know, the Twitter crowd is talking all day, every day. If you have eight hundred followers on Twitter and you're excited about that, then I'm afraid I'm going to burst your bubble. The bare minimum of followers that will benefit you on Twitter is 2000, and your goal should be to get to 60000 or 80000. The good news is that there are a few fantastic tools for doing just this.

[00:49:06.330]
My favorite is just unfollow. I'll show you some screenshots of that in a moment. We'll talk about it in more detail. But before we go there, let's look at a few pointers about good Twitter usage. Twitter has a custom audience feature just like Facebook or it's similar to Facebook's. If you're doing the Twitter advertising, it's a really good idea to use this feature. And also like Facebook, you should create reasons for people to join your mail list, your email list.

[00:49:33.600]
You should add a Twitter link to your email signature. Make sure that there's a link on your Web page with Twitter. You have to test, test, test. Now, every test should be within your brand. It has to be your voice. It has to be your pictures. It has to be consistent with who you want people to see you as or think about you as. I also strongly recommend having a face of a company out there on Facebook and Twitter and not just a logo.

[00:50:02.250]
It's really hard to connect to a logo and it could be a couple of faces that rotate through there. The logo can definitely be someplace else on your header information, but people connect with people, not with things. So whatever you can do to make it a personal connection and not a corporate connection is very beneficial. OK, so you're going to test, test, test all these different things. Don't hold out for the perfect idea. You have an idea that might get some attention.

[00:50:29.280]
Put it out there. If nobody retweeted and nobody favorites it there, it's just, you know, well, there's two possible reasons why don't you put it out at the wrong time. And it didn't really hit with anybody, but more likely, it just fell flat. Nobody saw any good reason to respond to it. There will be a lot of those. What you're going to do is watch the results of everything you put out there and see what gets the most attention.

[00:50:50.220]
And eventually you'll get better and better at putting out things that get likes and our favorites and read tweets. Just do it all within your brand voice. So you continue to build your image whether what you put out there is a hit or a dud. Twitter's a really big universe with a few major subgroups within it, the biggest subgroup of Twitter is social media. For social media's sake, these guys are trying to make money off of social media. The next subgroup is for is people for whom social media is a game or a means of entertainment.

[00:51:23.520]
They collect followers and they sort of let their hair down online. And the third group is the one that uses Twitter as a news and information feed. They're not participators. They don't care how many followers they have. They just want to see what's passing through. And then after those three groups, there are thousands of little subgroups, but those are the big ones. The good news for you as a consumer goods luxury goods seller is all of these people could potentially buy jewelry.

[00:51:53.700]
So you're going to cast a very big, very big net and let the wrong fish swim on out and the right ones will stay.

[00:52:01.290]
And they will ultimately expose your brand to their friends and followers who are also interested. So you want to cast as wide a net as possible on Twitter, because Twitter will give you far more followers far more quickly than Facebook ever will. And you can bring more of those Twitter followers over to Facebook to join you there. And and then you're engaging them in both places. And that increases brand awareness. I'll tell you how to do that in a moment.

[00:52:30.750]
So first, let's look at this product called Just Unfollow. Just Unfollow is a tool for building your Twitter visibility and engagement. It does also work on Instagram. But right now, the tools more powerful for Twitter. There's a free version that's good for one account. Like if you just have one Twitter account, there's a ten dollars a month version that will let you manage to accounts like Twitter and Instagram and at twenty dollars a month version that will let you handle five accounts.

[00:52:54.780]
And then there are larger subscriptions for people who are doing social media management.

[00:52:58.620]
By the way, I don't get any endorsements or money or benefit from just unfollow or who did I mention before short stack. These people don't even know I'm talking about them. It's just these are the tools my company has chosen to use after testing a lot of tools. And I figured I'd save you the testing and tell you which ones we think are best to use. OK, here are the things just unfollow will do for you. It will show you who your fans are, which of course are different than friends.

[00:53:24.210]
Right? See, with friends, there's reciprocation. Think about what I said earlier about being social. You should make sure you're following the people who are following you so it will show you your fans and make it easy for you to follow them back. You can also see who unfollowed you unless you're just really enjoying their posts. It makes it really easy to unfollow them and keep your Twitter news feed filled with only the people you're actually engaging with because they're seeing what you're posting.

[00:53:54.480]
You can also see who followed you and follow you and follow them back. You may be surprised to find out how many serious Twitter users will unfollow you in just a few days if they don't see that you've reciprocated and followed them. And you can see which of your followers are inactive. For a long time, I didn't pay very much attention to my Twitter account. And then I got interested and I started working it. I had about fourteen hundred followers then, and of those, over 700 of them hadn't been active in six months or longer.

[00:54:25.830]
I wasn't getting any value out of them. Worse, I was assuming that my posts were potentially getting to fourteen hundred people when they were getting the less than seven hundred. So these are the main things that just unfollowed does. Let's take a look at a few screenshots. This is a screenshot from my Who Followed Me analysis, so at the top I can see new followers by day. I have twenty one new followers since the last time I checked, and I usually check it twice a day.

[00:54:55.030]
And this example, I had four hundred and eighty eight new followers on Friday, May twenty third, which is right up here at the top. Right. That kind of information will cause me to go back to my tweets for that day and see what I shared so I can do more of it. That gets that many followers. After that I see my new followers and that's toward the bottom right. And the green plus sign to the right makes it super easy for me to follow them back.

[00:55:22.280]
Now, this is a screenshot from my inactive following analysis, and my daughter is right at the top of the list, I guess Twitter just isn't her thing. The red minus sign to the right makes it easy for you to unfollow your inactive followers. So why delete the inactive and the ones who have unfollowed you? Well, you don't always I won't delete my daughter, nor will I delete Barbe a few rows down, because if either one of them get back on Twitter, I want to know.

[00:55:50.150]
But for the most part, you don't want inactive and non followers in your follower account. This obscures the real impact that you're having because you feel like you're talking to more people than you actually are. So using good Twitter hygiene is a really important way to stay on top of your brand messaging and reach. Now, this is where Just Unfollow gets really fun, I can copy the followers of Twitter users that I believe have the type of followers I want to have talk about building custom audiences.

[00:56:25.650]
So here you can see that I've decided to copy some followers from the MJSA. I put their username, which is mjsatweets in the follow box, and I tell it to show me their followers. It sorts the list of followers from their most engaged to their least engaged. So I see the best followers they have and it hides the followers who I'm following already. All I have to do is click the green button that I'm following them. Now, why is this good?

[00:56:54.090]
Well, A, I'm getting more relevant information in my news feed, but B is the big reason. Remember how conventions on Twitter are to follow back? A very good percentage of these active Twitter users will do just that and you'll be building your audience. And the hashtag follow works the same way here I use the hashtag #jck2014, and then I was given the most engaged users of that hashtag to follow.

[00:57:28.310]
So I use the copy followers and the keyword follow to grow my answer or my audience.

[00:57:34.730]
Now, what I do with my Twitter feed is I go in and follow about 200 to 250 people a day and it's when you're over two thousand followers, you can follow more than that. There are Twitter limits. You'll just hit them. And Twitter will make you wait two or three days to come back and follow anyone else.

[00:57:53.480]
But I follow two hundred two hundred fifty a day and then I go back to the Who's Not Following Me screen and I unfollow the oldest one hundred fifty or so that aren't following me still.

[00:58:09.980]
And that way I know those are people I followed, you know, two or three days ago and they haven't come back and followed me yet. And so I just drop them and I go after some new users and I just cycle through that all the time and pick up lots of new followers.

[00:58:26.360]
Here's some information that may be really useful to you. It's the users of each platform that are currently using other platforms to read this chart. You read it from left to right. For example, looking at the top row, you'd say, of all my Twitter users, 53 percent of them are probably on Instagram, 35 percent of them are likely using Pinterest. Thirty nine percent of them are also on LinkedIn, and 90 percent of them likely have Facebook accounts.

[00:58:51.860]
Understanding these relationships between the platforms will help you decide where to place messages. For example, a lot of business owners committed to LinkedIn before they were willing to give Facebook a try. Some of them are still on LinkedIn, but not using Facebook yet. Obviously, from this chart, it looks like 17 percent of them that are on LinkedIn aren't using Facebook yet. So you may find that you have 800 contacts in LinkedIn, but only 73 fans on your Facebook page.

[00:59:22.730]
Did you know that you can download your entire contact list from LinkedIn as a spreadsheet file and then you can upload those email addresses as custom audiences and Facebook? Again, you could do the same thing in Twitter.

[00:59:37.880]
According to the chart above, you can expect approximately 83 percent of your LinkedIn users to also have a Facebook account. And then you could send a targeted ad to your Facebook custom audience or to your Twitter custom audience, encouraging them to like you or follow you. Why would you want to do this? Well, a couple of reasons. One, you want to engage your customers in as many different places as possible. If they see your ad in a trade magazine and they get your postcard in the mail and they also see you go buy in their Facebook news feed and they chat with you once in a while, and then you show up in their Twitter feed and you put something interesting on Linked In and they also encounter you at a trade show.

[01:00:21.440]
All of these impressions are adding up to one big impression, particularly if you're using all the conventions we've talked about today and you're building this powerful brand image.

[01:00:35.450]
Also, think about it in the term of how LinkedIn is.

[01:00:40.280]
You know, when you're comparing the networks, LinkedIn is the least social of the social environments. LinkedIn conversations are very focused on hiring and networking and selling services. So if you want your customers to have a more meaningful engagement with your company, you really need to draw them into where the conversations happen. That's actually mostly Facebook. Or you could think about it in terms of a different social context. If you run into someone in the lobby or the elevator of your office building, you're more likely to have a brief or more formal conversation with them.

[01:01:12.950]
Then if you happen to sit down next to them in a bar or catch them at a social event. In this case, LinkedIn is the lobby and Facebook is the bar. Neither one's better than the other. They're just different. If you want to build a more complex relationship with someone, you need to meet them in a variety of scenarios. Have you ever had the experience where you see someone at the coffee shop that you usually see at the gym and you don't recognize them?

[01:01:38.240]
Context is important to how we recognize people. You want to be known in multiple contexts to your prospects and customers, and that's going to help your brand and your message be more sticky.

[01:01:51.560]
Here's another cross promotion from my own Twitter and Facebook pages. So on Twitter, we posted that we'll be live tweeting this presentation under the hashtag #jckandrea. But we also told them that we'd have richer content on our Facebook page because we don't have the character limits. And then there's a link to the Facebook page now that would get my Twitter followers that I have a lot more of, like my Facebook page. And then we did the same thing in reverse on Facebook.

[01:02:17.900]
We let people know that if they weren't following us on Twitter, they'd get different types of information on this speech, on the Twitter feed and they were going to get in Facebook. Doing this sort of cross promotion helps you bring followers from one network to the other, which multiplies your opportunities for engagement, which builds your brand.

[01:02:38.400]
Using social media to expand your brand is important because social media does deliver the numbers, but impressions alone don't mean much. Some people say they don't mean anything, but that's not quite true. If you're following all the guidelines I've offered you today, you are creating a cumulative impression with your brand, and that is meaningful. It's the subliminal sticky stuff in the sea of data that is the Internet. But you have to have really large followings on social media to make it work.

[01:03:08.190]
So build your followings, spend 10 minutes per day on Facebook, sharing information and posting new brand cohesive, consistent content, searching out other people with similar target, with pages, with similar target customers and inviting new followers. Spend another 10 minutes each day working. You're just unfollow following new people and cleaning out your own followers and your inactive followers and then watch your engagement metrics to indicate whether or not your content is resonating with your followers. If you're posting content and nobody cares, you're wasting time.

[01:03:42.030]
A really easy way to do this is with clout.

[01:03:46.230]
So what's Klout? Well, it's a free service that does a decent job of measuring engagement on social media. A Klout score of 50 or higher is a good sign of engagement. I have a goal of reaching a Klout score of eighty two by the end of this year. I just set that goal. It's random, so we'll see how I do and you can see how I do because you can see anyone's Klout score in the image. On the left you can see the red cloud flags it kind of toward the just in the bottom half of the screen.

[01:04:16.500]
This is from my smartphone. The one the flag on the right is mine. And the flag on the left is a Twitter user named Founding Mom, who's an influencer in small business circles. So I'm currently chasing her Klout score, which is two points higher than mine. It was five points higher than mine when I set her as my goal. And once I pick her all or what I pass her, then I'll pick a new social media influencer to meet and beat.

[01:04:39.300]
And in the image on the right, that's where I've opened up my Klout. And it shows me how much my Klout score has gone up in a day, how much it's gone up over the last week, and how much it's gone up over the last month. If your Klout score is going up rapidly, like I once in a while, I'll get a day change of like a point. Then I immediately look at what I did that day and see if I can replicate it when my Klout score goes down.

[01:05:03.390]
It's usually because I haven't been active enough, but it's a very immediate rating. You can see your score change two or three times a day.

[01:05:12.100]
Now, I haven't talked about how to maximize your followers and brand with all the different social media environments, largely because we only have an hour today and I'm already at risk of running over. What I will tell you is this all roads must lead to sales, so. As long as you're using this is the most powerful part of this program that you're using one integrated, consistent brand approach, so every single impression has an exponential effect. Wherever they see you, you're the same company.

[01:05:48.800]
And all those exposures can be turned into genuine engagement, which can be turned into sales. And that's the order it's getting on their radar, inciting enough interest to follow your join you, getting them engaged with you, using that engagement to build enough interest to have a desire to buy from you and then taking them to the sale. And the faster you get them from awareness to sale, the more successful you'll be.

[01:06:19.760]
This is how it should feel to your prospects.

[01:06:21.500]
And customers like every page is just a piece of a cohesive story, all moving together, moving them toward engagement and then desire and then purchase. And then loyalty. So to wrap it up, here's how to build a big business brand on a small business budget. Figure out who you are, why you matter and what makes you different. Create a powerful set of brand elements that are cohesive, consistent, and tell a shared story. Make sure all of your services and customer engagement also tell the story and engage as many senses as possible and make sure your product offerings are consistent with your brand story.

[01:07:04.470]
You want to get more value out of every dollar in traditional media by ensuring that your impressions all layer together to form a cohesive whole. And then you're going to use social media to cast a wide net. So you have this constant funnel of new prospect, a funnel that's much larger than you could afford without social media. And what you're going to do is pull everything back to your website and your store and your brand. So why is this the secret?

[01:07:32.460]
Because this approach gives you leverage. It allows you to build your brand faster and with fewer dollars, then an approach that has you all over the map. It allows you to make much more significant impact than if you were using multiple messages, images, colors and voices. Small business owners have less money to work with than big businesses, but you're competing for the same customers. You have to use every bit of leverage you can get, and this method gives you brand leverage.

[01:08:03.590]
I want to thank you for your time and attention, and I really appreciate you being here with me today. This is Andrea Hill and you've been enjoying another training experience from StrategyWerx.

Ask the average management consultant about organizational change, and he’ll tell you that more organizations need to do a better job of embracing more change. Ask the average CFO about organizational change, and she’ll likely tell you that organizations need to do a better job of maintaining and improving the things they are already doing.

The change/don’t change conflict has existed as long as fathers have had sons, children have taken over family businesses, and marriages have reached 25^th anniversaries. If you had to choose one option over the other, the only option that would carry you into the future would be to choose change. But change is always disruptive, and it can be quite dangerous if not applied with deep knowledge and finesse.

Some elements of a business should be fairly unchanging. The core values of a business should change very little over time, though they may evolve a bit as the business owners and participants deepen their understanding of them. One of the primary reasons for merger and acquisition disasters is the failure to consider differences in core values governing the cultures and brands of the organizations involved. Reconciling conflicting value systems is much more difficult than integrating computer systems (though systems migration is a bear). Business culture and business proposition are related to values, and should be similarly unchanging. 

Other elements of a business should be reviewed annually but changed far less often. Strategy is an example. Any business that adopts a new strategy each year has not embraced strategy at all – they are just pursuing serial tactics. Effective strategic planning looks out 7-10 years and creates ambitious multi-year plans and goals to achieve the strategy. Strategy should be monitored monthly and reviewed annually – but it should not be changed unless compelling market reasons to do so are present.

Brand is another element that should be constantly monitored but which should change rarely, and brand change should be subtle and incremental. Customers do not like the shock of adapting to new brand messages. Brand loyalty is based on trust, and trust is shaken when a friend you thought you knew suddenly changes.

Everything a company does to fulfill the promise of its brand and to achieve its strategy should be considered as viable candidates for change. But change should be considered carefully. For instance, if a company decides to implement a new sales strategy to achieve their long-term revenue and margin goals, they should conduct research to find out how long it typically takes for a business to benefit from such a change. If they expect to see immediate benefits, but case studies show that results typically require 18 months, it would be good to know that in advance. Too many companies abandon viable change efforts because they do not have realistic expectations.

Why am I speaking of change when the only news anyone wants to talk about is the economy? That’s why.

Too many companies are abandoning their values, their brands, and their strategies in an attempt to weather the storm – a storm which by all comparisons is bad but not tragic and is certainly precedented and survivable.

Too many companies are cutting loose important (strategic) talent, eliminating their advertising budgets, changing their marketing strategies, and reducing their operations to customer-unfriendly shells in an effort to survive a bad tornado season that’s been billed as an earth-bound meteor. 

If your business values, strategy, and brand were sound before the recession, they probably still are. Evaluate them, yes – particularly to see if the irrational reaction of your competitors is creating market opportunity for you. In a recessionary economy the tactics you deploy to achieve your strategy and brand may need to be tweaked, adjusted, and redirected. If you keep your eye on your established strategy and brand, you can modify your approach to take current market conditions into account, and find success. 

The types of changes you should – and should not – make during a recession are the same types of change you should consider during a strong economy. Don’t let the economy dictate how you will run your business. To do so would be the last type of change you want to make. A terrible change in leadership.

© 2009. Andrea M. Hill

For the first time in 20 years I had to miss the jewelry shows in Vegas. It gave me an interesting opportunity to observe the shows entirely through social media. At one point, in support of my (almost entirely female) writing brethren covering the shows, I started the hashtag #WomenWithPens. Shortly thereafter, Lorraine DePasque offered the insight that she wished the coverage had more depth than #WomenWithRingsOnTheirFingers, a thought that had already been very much on my mind.

You see, in my attempt to ‘experience’ the shows through social media, I was very disappointed. Oh, I love all the pictures of people and jewelry – and it’s great to see the smiling faces of so many people I care about. But I wanted content. I wanted analysis and insight. And that, I’m afraid, was in short order.

Why does this matter? Because the future of marketing is about content (here's an infographic that includes information on how Content fuels sales). In both B2B and B2C marketing, content is now a requirement, a minimum standard necessary to compete. If we’re not practicing the job of developing content with each other, if industry leaders and writers aren’t modeling this behavior for the brands, designers, and retailers, then we risk becoming irrelevant on the new marketing stage.

What is content? Content is information of interest to consumers – information that educates, entertains, challenges, creates respect and trust, and inspires – information that leads to the desire to engage with the brand. Yes, images are part of that, but alone they are insufficient. The mainstream jewelry industry is consistently out-Instagrammed and out-Twittered by consumers and hobbyists showing jewelry pictures.

I’d like to take a moment to recognize a few of the industry’s top next-wave content-developers and publishers. I am intentionally leaving out the style editors for this article. Don’t get me wrong – journalists Jennifer Heebner, Lorraine DePasque, and Tanya Dukes, PR Mavens Amanda Gizzi, Michelle Orman, Andrea Hansen, and Helena Krodel Wegweiser, and bloggers GemGossip, Katerina Perez, The Jewellery Editor (and quite a few others – these are my go-tos) all have a very important role in the promotion and understanding of jewelry – and their coverage is fantastic.  But I want to talk about the other writers for a moment.

Let’s start with Peggy Jo Donahue. Nobody does more to convey the thoughts and lessons of the jewelry industry via social media than Peggy. She captures the most valuable sound-bites from educational sessions and pushes them out to the rest of us – in fact, she was the only social media publisher doing so at the shows this year. Like the dyed-in-the-wool journalist that she is, Peggy Jo is always on the hunt for something new, something insightful, something of depth to share with the rest of the industry. She is a true industry treasure, and this year, my most dependable eyes on the show I had to miss. She is the reason I started the #WomenWithPens hashtag. Let me make this point one more time: Nobody else provided any significant body of non-stylist jewelry industry content from the shows this year. For the thousands of retailers and brands who did not attend the show, they saw lots and lots of style information, but very little information of business value.

Beyond the show, there are a few journalists and essayists who regularly publish content on social media that meets the definition of interesting, educational, inspirational, challenging, engaging. (Why do I differentiate between journalists and essayists? Both are equally important – but different in significant ways. Journalists sometimes write essays, but essayists rarely employ the disciplines of journalism. Click the links above if you’re curious about the difference.)

Sometimes people forget that Cindy Edelstein is not just the industry’s biggest mensch, but also a trained journalist. Though her day job involves much more than writing, Cindy uses social media platforms all day every day to develop, curate and share industry knowledge to her customer base. Very few days go by without something educational, thought-provoking, or industry-promoting from Cindy. She does this for two reasons: A) to model to the industry what we should all be doing, and B) to ensure that her important content makes it to every potential audience member.

Two relatively new writers, Monica Stephens (iDazzle) and Barbara Palumbo (Adornmentality) are helping take industry content-writing to the next level. They use social media platforms with the ease of the Millennial, and they use their pens to advance causes and thought processes. Late last year Monica published an article that implored the industry to stop differentiating between precious and semiprecious gemstones. It was important work, because it pointed out that the difference is just so much industry navel gazing, not relevant to the next generation of jewelry buyers. She made us think.

When JCK Magazine’s annual Top 50 Industry Powerbase article appeared this year with only 13 women in it, Barbara Palumbo made it a personal mission to correct the imbalance. Her #FiftyWomenOfJewelry series has been recognizing women who have made and continue to make serious contributions to the jewelry industry. As Cindy Edelstein said just last week (before she was ever included, by the way), "Barbara's choices for the series have been well-researched and right on all the way."

Two men, Rob Bates and Matthew Perosi, also regularly develop meaningful industry content and use social media effectively to expand their reach. They get to be honorary #WomenWithPens – but there is nothing ‘honorary’ about including them in this list of writers who are at the forefront of new publishing in the jewelry industry.

And here my list ends.**  No, seriously. It ends here. The industry has many terrific writers (please, acknowledge your favorites in the comments! The writers of industry are the thought leaders, and we need to celebrate them every chance we get), and several excellent magazines.

But as an industry, we aren’t maximizing our use of social media – yet – to get our stories across. For the magazines, having a strong website filled with constantly updated content is a minimum standard necessary to compete. I’m talking about going beyond that standard, for editorial and brand entities alike to proactively engage with readers in all the places they congregate - and with more than just pictures of jewelry.

I am regularly asked – by brands, jewelry designers, and retailers – how they can justify and maximize their use of social media to get business value from it. I tell them all the same thing. Find your story, your perspective, your specific angle on the jewelry business and create content about it. Tell stories, write blogs, publish images with interesting and thought-provoking commentary, engage in social media conversations where you can bring your unique perspective to the audience, and pass along content developed by others that is consistent with and expands upon your viewpoint.

Follow the people mentioned in this article. You will learn a tremendous amount about how to use social media to engage your own audience, and you will experience a constant supply of quality information that is suitable for passing on. And that’s how it’s done.

Considering that we create and sell services, and not physical products, people are often surprised that Art Direction is treated as one of the most critical roles in our company and sits in the Strategy pillar of our organization chart (in our org chart, we don’t assign roles based on traditional departments or hierarchy—we organize them based on function and purpose. It’s a role-based structure, not a title-based one, and we place each role where it most powerfully contributes to the company’s mission).

Art Direction sits in the Strategy pillar —not in marketing or creative.

Because for us, visual identity is strategic:

• It shapes how people experience our services.
• It sets the tone for trust, quality, and clarity.
• It communicates what words alone often cannot.

When visual identity is siloed as “just design” or “just marketing,” the result is often a disjointed brand experience—one where strategy says one thing, but design suggests another.

In any business where perception and execution are tightly linked, how things look is inseparable from how they work—and how they feel to the customer. Design isn’t just window dressing. It’s infrastructure for belief and trust.

That’s why we treat visual language as a strategic discipline—not just a creative one. Because for a brand to fully resonate, design has to be attached to everything: the product, the packaging, the platform, the physical space, the trade show booth, the pitch deck, the onboarding email. Every touchpoint is a chance to tell a consistent story. Or to undermine it. For example, when every customer service or help desk email design aligns with your service tone and with your overall brand... when every shipped package (labels, packing materials, even box design) reflects your design vision and brand promise... clients gain clarity and confidence with each interaction. That's how you build strategic follow-through into your branding.

When design carries the same intent as strategy, customers don’t just understand what we stand for—they feel it. From beginning to end.

We all know that responsive is good. Responsive means your spouse is happier than most spouses. Responsive means that your teenager is capable of doing what you ask of him. Responsive means the drugs are working.  Responsive is good.

Especially when  it comes to websites.

In February 2015 Google announced that it would change its search algorithm to give extra points to websites that proved to be mobile friendly.  What does that mean? A mobile friendly site is a site that:

1. Does not use Flash or other software that does not work well on mobile devices
2. Uses text that can be read without zooming
3. Sizes the content on the screen so users don't have to scroll horizontally or vertically to see it
4. Places links far enough apart so the correct link can be easily tapped - even with large fingers (or provides an automatic zoom feature to bring the link up for verification).

Google's Day of Mobile Readiness came and went on April 21, 2015, and guess what? Companies that previously enjoyed high search engine visibility - but which did not update their sites to be responsive - have dropped precipitously since that time.

Perhaps you figured you had other, more pressing business concerns to invest in. Perhaps you hate spending money on marketing. Perhaps your previous experience with website design left you with a bad taste in your mouth. But none of that matters, because mobile website traffic is growing at 3.5% per month across all sectors and industries, and mobile search will surpass desktop searches this year. So even if Google hadn't changed their search algorithm in April, consumers and B-to-B customers are already voting with their smartphones.

When is the last time you even looked at your website from your smartphone or tablet? If you have to scroll, pinch & pull, or squint to view your website, it's not mobile friendly. But don't take my word for it - take Google's. They've produced a Mobile Friendly Test that you can use for free. Just visit this site, enter your domain name, and watch the analyzer do its work. Go ahead and test it now.

If your website came back with a "mobile friendly" result, congratulations! Keep up the good work of keeping up with change on the internet. If you received a "not ready" result, it's time to make some changes.

There are essentially three different ways to make your website mobile responsive. The first (and oldest) approach is to offer a mobile version of your website, perhaps with the domain type of .mobi. This isn't a great option. It creates double-work for you and your staff, and it means that your SEO results get diluted across two domains. If your website provider suggests this, tell him no. The only person who will make more money doing this is him.

The next approach is something called Dynamic Serving. Think of it as a device sniffer. Someone calls up your website, the Dynamic Services sniff out what device is being used, and delivers the correct version. This approach tends to have a high error rate, and with devices changing constantly, it must be updated all the time. Like the previous option, tell your development partner no. This approach ultimately has a high cost-of-ownership.

The one approach you should use is a Responsive Design for your website. Responsive Design means you create and maintain one website. How does it work? Well, picture your website as a grid - which is how most websites are programmed. Here is an example of a grid from a website:

 Until fairly recently, these grids were always static, which means that the elements were in a fixed position to one another.  If you view a static grid website from a mobile phone, you will have to scroll to the right if you want to go from the logo to the header content.

In a responsive website, the grid elements are flexible. On a desktop, the grid elements will appear as in the drawing. On a smartphone, the elements will shuffle and become a vertical stack. You can even decide that some elements will only be visible when viewed from a desktop or tablet, and create specific alternative elements that show only on mobile phones.

If your site isn't mobile ready, it's critical that you invest in updating it as soon as possible. It is next-to-impossible to compete in the current business climate without a good website, and consumers increasingly disregard businesses that are falling behind on the digital marketing front. Until you do, Google will penalize you in their search, though you can earn your search position back once you update your site. And don't think this is just affecting you in Google. The only way a search engine makes money is if the people using it believe they get good search results. Being sent off to a website that offers a bad user experience reflects poorly on the search engine, so all the search engines - Bing, Yahoo, AOL, etc. - are highly aware of the fact that mobile search is where consumers are driving the internet.

If your site is built on a hosted engine like Shopify or Etsy, you are already covered. If you have a stand-alone site, move away from custom website design if you can. Using a website platform that is constantly being updated (think WordPress, Joomla, or Magento) is a far superior approach that will keep you up-to-date and save you money in the near and long-term.

Modernizing your website may seem daunting, but it's a good thing. A responsive website will better meet the needs of your customers, which means you will ultimately experience more foot traffic, website sales, and loyalty. Sure, the Mobile Bandwagon may have just passed you by, but with a bit of an effort you can catch up again.

If you’ve been waiting for the US luxury buyer to return to pre-2008 levels, it’s time for you to move on.

What has happened to the luxury buyer is more than a business cycle; it’s a long-term change.

Let’s quickly do the math. Affluents as a whole are twice as important to any marketer that sells consumer goods and services, regardless of price. When it comes to selling luxury goods, Affluents are four to five times as important. So statistics about Affluents really matter to the jewelry industry.

Luxury industry data shows that younger Affluents (24-44 years old) spend twice as much on luxury items as older Affluents (45 – 70 years old). Back in 2008, the younger Affluents were 17 – 37 years old, which means that a significant percentage of them (half?) hadn’t yet reached their spending power. In the meantime, older Affluents are nearly 8 years older than they were the last time they were big luxury spenders.

Who are these younger Affluents? The older portion are Generation X (35-50 year olds), and the younger are Millennials (18-34 year olds). In sheer numbers there are now more Millennials; ~81 million in 2015, compared to ~50 million GenX (of which many are part of the older Affluents group). So, your new luxury consumer is a Millennial. No surprise there – we’ve all been talking about this for a few years now.

Two social factors make these statistics very important to luxury goods companies:

1. During the recession we witnessed changing attitudes toward consumption and wealth. Those with wealth became less likely to spend it, felt less wealthy in general (even if they were very wealthy compared to the average American), and became highly conscious of how they are viewed in society (i.e., the 1%). Outside of the richest of the rich financial markets, elitism is out (keep in mind that in much of the country, elitism was never in).
2. Millenials (and Generation Z – the next consumer frontier) have entirely different attitudes toward luxury than the generations that shored up the luxury industry before them.

If you’re a luxury retailer in the US, that’s about all you need to know. But what if you’re a luxury brand? Is the news just as bad everywhere? Actually, it’s worse.

While elitism and status still play well in most international markets, conflict, social unrest, and weak economic systems are inhibiting consumer spending across the globe. In addition, it’s not a coincidence that strong demand for US luxury goods in Russia, China, India, and Europe coincided with years of a weak US dollar.

So. What do you do with this information if you’re a jewelry retail store owner, designer, or brand? You revitalize, and you start doing it now, because this trend is going to continue. Even if older luxury buyers bounce back a little, it won’t be enough to return us to former spending patterns, because younger luxury buyers are quickly becoming the dominant market.

What’s that you say? Your business model has endured multiple cycles over the past 50-80 years? That may be true, but it’s not relevant, A) because this isn’t just another cycle, and B) because the last 80 years saw the largest era of consumer empowerment the country (and world) had ever seen, empowerment that expressed itself as acquisition. But we’re on the cusp of a new era, an era in which consumer empowerment expresses itself as something else.

Many of the things I’m about to suggest are old news – I’ve suggested them before in my writing and speeches, and you’ve heard them from industry journalists willing to challenge the status quo (Rob Bates is at the top of that list).

So I’ll recap (and reference) the things that have been addressed sufficiently already, then focus more attention on bringing a few important issues to the surface; business concerns that are still not getting adequate attention in our industry.

You Need to Make Changes in Product and in Presentation

Everywhere you look there’s a new article, a new blog, a new interview that talks about how Millennials and Generation Z want something unique, something custom, something special, they want stories, they have problems with diamonds, they don’t care about precious metals. They want quality, it’s about the experience, brand reputation matters, and ownership holds less importance for them. These things matter to them in general, so how high do you think Millennial expectations are regarding luxury? If you want to read more about Millennial expectations of jewelry, here are some terrific articles.

Rethinking Open to Buy: (Matthew Perosi’s jWAG blog from yesterday, 5/26/2015)
Understanding Millennials: How to Sell Lasting Luxury in a Disposable Culture (The Centurion: Hedda Schupak)
Fashion Designers, automakers top millenials’ list of luxury brands (Luxury Daily)

There are 8,162 people on Twitter with “jewelry designer” in their bio (and that’s just the English filter). I know many of them, and there’s a lot of genuine design talent out there. Much of that talent comes with a story, social awareness, trunk shows, and energized social media. But independent jewelry designers can’t get their foot in the door at traditional jewelry retailers. So they sell at art fairs and craft fairs and online, and many of them are learning to do very well selling directly to (your) consumers. Clearly, we have ample information on what matters now, yet not enough people in this industry are reacting to this demand.

Making and Designing are Not the Same Thing

In 2013 Fast Company said, “For Millennials, design is not a differentiator. It’s the cost of entry.” Millennials care about design on two levels: the design of the product, and the design of the experience.

One of the effects of growing up with the internet is that Millennials have seen more art and been influenced by more graphic design than any generation before them. They are intensely visual. They report they will turn down a job rather than work in an ugly or uninspiring environment. They care about beauty, architecture, and public spaces. They won’t spend their hard-earned money on products that are average. Even their kitchen utensils demonstrate good design principles. A solitaire diamond in a setting with a few flourishes may not offend, but it doesn’t excite either.

If you aren’t sure you know the difference between excellent design and meh, enlist some help, because Millennials do.

Now. Here’s the stuff not enough people are talking about

The Jewelry Experience

Everyone is throwing about the word experience in retail, saying experience is the key to consumer loyalty. But what does experience really mean?

Consumers would rather get wine at a wine & cheese bar, coffee at an organic coffee shop or Starbucks, and baked goods at a café. All those places are better at offering food, coffee, and wine than you are. So what do they want from you?

A better buying experience, which is not just about your product offering. It’s also about your store design and your processes.

Experience design is very important to Millennials. They have grown up in a world where they can assemble (on their own) the organizational, communication, and information tools to make their lives easier. It’s second nature to them. They are used to being able to find and purchase any product they desire and can afford, no matter how esoteric. They are used to collaborating over distance and across languages. Studies have shown that Millennials find outdated and cumbersome systems like opening bank accounts, buying a house, and buying a car to be not only distasteful, but enraging.

So how do you think they feel about your current engagement ring sales process? Does the next generation jewelry buyer really want to be led through your store to the bridal area, sit at a counter, and suffer through the diamond-buying experience?  They did the research before they arrived. If your selection is six different cases of the same thing followed by a two-week wait, they’re probably not impressed. Jewelers who find a way to reinvent the process of selling engagement rings will really be on to something.

When I walk into my local Verizon store, the sales reps are either actively helping other customers or they are . . . sitting in lounge chairs in the middle of the store, apparently just hanging out. They wave you over warmly, and you go sit with them (there are always empty seats). They pull you into their conversation, which is usually about what’s the latest cool thing in phones. Instant collegiality. You engage in a conversation with them instead of being sold to. They whip out their tablets and talk with you about options – before they ever walk you to a wall display. Ten years ago I preferred a root canal to a visit to the cell phone store. Today, I look forward to checking in with my phone buddies. How does the experience of walking into your store, being greeted, and exchanging information feel? Does it inspire the same feeling of collegiality? Does it stir interest and excitement? Or is it intimidating, cool, and separated by a case and a gate?

The experience of the Apple store is so fantastic that people are writing books about it (check out The Apple Experience, by Carmine Gallo). The average store generates $5,600 per square foot, which makes it the most profitable retail store on the planet. There are a lot of facets to the Apple experience, but let’s focus on the store design for a moment. Steve Jobs was adamant that their stores be more than four walls with stuff to sell inside; Apple stores are a stage. Apple didn’t build every store, but they did the absolute most with the locations they chose. Architectural and design beauty are highlighted, and where possible they integrate into their surroundings as part of the experience (you can’t really tell where the Grand Central Apple Store ends and the Station begins). Apple took products that are typically in the box, behind-the-glass, and put them front and center. They made it clear that people are supposed to come in, play, experiment, and even hang out with one another in the store. The customer who comes, stays, and leaves without a purchase is treated with as much warmth and attention as the person who walks in and presents a credit card. They offer immersive training experiences to build customer attachment to and comfort with their products. And finally, the stores are devoid of anything that is irrelevant to the experience of Apple products. They’re streamlined, purposeful, and immaculate. What is the visual experience of your store? Is it inspiring to approach and enter? Is there junk behind the counter? Tape on the front of a case? Three-year-old posters or signs? Are there elements in play that have nothing to do with the simple goal of telling your compelling story, connecting with your customer, and selling your exciting products? Millennials notice these things.

I’m a knitter, and for me, knitting is all about fiber. If you buy skein of yarn at Michael’s or Walmart, it will cost you anywhere from $2 - $15. A typical skein of yarn for me is upwards of $50. I shop at a very special little fiber shop that knows its customers are buying luxuries. The shop is definitely knitty and not high-endy. The shop owner does a dozen things worth mentioning, but let’s talk about the checkout experience for a moment. She doesn’t have a cash register. She has a few comfy chairs around a coffee table, and on the coffee table is a tablet. When you’re done with your purchases, you sit in one of the chairs and you drop all your balls of yarn on the table. While you chat with the store owner, she rings up your purchases on her tablet, but it all feels like you’re just drinking coffee and knitting together. She’s so good at scanning and ringing up the sale that she remains present with me and our conversation the entire time. Something else of interest; I often find myself giving knitting advice and tips to the women in the other chairs, because I’m the oldest one there. Michael’s and the craft section at Walmart aren't exactly Millennial or Generation Z hangouts, but this shop attracts them every day.

The one interactive process you have that likely elicits a certain amount of excitement is custom design. But even then, most jewelers aren’t prepared to collaborate with Millennial customers the way they want to be collaborated with. The process itself must be seamless – from initial discussion to jewelry delivery. If it’s not, Millennials will scoff at your organizational clumsiness. And what tools are you using? Do you make them come back to the store to review design options? Do you have an endless stream of email going back and forth (Millennials would rather not deal with email unless at work). If you’re not prepared to have your seamless process either available through a phone app or at least through a shared folder in something like Evernote, your process needs improvement.

If you’re a retailer, you have all these processes in your store. People enter, they browse, they have questions, they may need to finance something, they may want to do a custom design, and they have a check-out experience. If you’re not actively experimenting with updating the processes in your store to meet the demands of a very different generation of consumers, you’re going to watch your current customer base slowly die off until you go out of business.

Embrace Technology

The fashion industry is going after technology-as-experience in a big way after falling behind consumer expectations (though not as behind as the jewelry industry). Live-streaming of fashion shows, virtual stores, wearable technology, and other types of digital innovation are now at the forefront of fashion thinking. Fashion brand Rebecca Minkoff has dressing rooms that make suggestions about complementary items to try. Even Fabergé has enabled ecommerce, after years of insisting that ecommerce would tarnish their brand.

The consumer currency of the future is information information information. The kind of information that helps consumers make buying decisions. The kind of information that tells an interesting story. The kind of information that holds their attention for longer than 20 seconds. The kind of information that helps them satisfy concerns about the provenance or manufacture or sustainability or morality of the things they buy. In addition, they want much of that information before they ever make time in their busy schedules to come to your store. It takes technology to do that.

Delivering that information doesn’t start with your website. That’s like hiking the Pacific Trail for weeks with no shower and then putting on lipstick (yes, Wild reference there). Your management of the information that fuels your business must start much deeper in your business processes.

Think about how you approach technology in your business. If you’re like most people, you probably have a pretty current smart phone. But how old is your computer? How often do you explore new software to make your job more efficient? Are you using cloud services or still trying to figure out where the cloud is? Do you and your staff use technology to make you more communicative, more efficient, and more relevant to your customers? Is social media just an extension of your break room, or are you using it for serious marketing insight? Can you make fast, effective decisions about your inventory; decisions that enable you to innovate and respond to a changing market? How is your product database? Do you use all the bells and whistles for product detail and descriptions? Do you collect all the customer information you can collect? Most important of all, do you use all this data to help you run a better business?

There are technology tools that can help you with every single operational and marketing need. Everything I’ve discussed in this article can be enhanced with technology. And even if you’re way behind the curve on your technical skills, you need to start developing them now, because business is going to keep changing faster and faster, and if you think the Millennials have high expectations of your competence, wait until you start serving Generation Z.

Get Fast. Get Diversified. Get Lean.

Getting Lean is the process of streamlining, automating, and de-cluttering your business processes, from manufacturing to stocking, from hiring to sales. Many business owners think that getting lean is for the purpose of reducing prices. While it can certainly be used for that purpose, there’s another major reason to do so. It’s to get fast and to get diversified.

Think back to the late ‘90s and early 2000s when the US jewelry manufacturing base outsourced itself to Asia. Why did that happen? Because reducing the cost of labor was the quickest way to reduce the cost per piece. Of course, that had its downsides. The economics only held if you produced a minimum of hundreds of those pieces. Hindsight being 20/20, we can see that we were selling off our manufacturing expertise at the same time a new generation was being born – a generation that doesn’t want to wear or own the same things everyone else has.

Beyond the excellence of their design, there is a reason that designer brands like Todd Reed, Omi Prive, Just Jules and Pamela Froman have such consumer appeal. There is an element of customization to many (or even most) of the pieces they produce - something you simply can't do if you're manufacturing in China. To accomplish a steady flow of product customization, brands must constantly attend to the operational efficiency of their workshops, because customization gets harder to manage the farther it gets from home.

The other advantage to lean, local(ish) operations is that you can keep your inventory of finished goods to a minimum, which allows you to respond more quickly to changing consumer demand. Yes, yes, jewelry is more expensive to produce than fashion, so it’s harder to change it. But the consumers don’t really care about that difficulty, so the retailers, designers, and brands who figure out the keys to keeping inventory fresh and exciting will win this game.

Retailers need to buy less product more often to keep the store fresh and consumers interested (hint – doing all your buying once each year in Vegas is not going to cut it – inventory needs to change more often than annually). Designers and wholesalers need to create policies that will support smaller, more frequent purchases, and they must migrate to release schedules that satisfy consumer desire for diversity and change. But as you can imagine, if designers and wholesalers are only receiving new orders once each year – with a small number of reorders occurring during the holidays – they simply won’t be able to invest in the merchandising strategies that consumers want.

Each of the concepts in this article could, itself, be a very long blog (and we didn’t even touch on how to market to Millennials. Maybe later). But it’s a good overview of where your head needs to be if you want your retail store, designer label, shop, or brand to become and remain relevant to the next generations of luxury buyers.

A dentist in Albuquerque is named Ken Hurt, and his tag line is it’s a name, not an intention. I’ve heard he’s a good dentist with a successful practice, but I never considered him when searching for a family practitioner. I recently visited an appealing coffee shop in a small town near our home, and though the coffee tasted fine, the price was right, and the shop was clean, the experience was inexplicably unsatisfying. Finally I figured out why – the shop didn’t smell like coffee. Driving home I was struck by a glaring anomaly in an antique-store window along a quaint main street – the 42” flat screen TVs on sale for $2,200 each.

More attention should be paid to the importance of being consistent with customer and prospect expectations.

Consider how many daily decisions you make, particularly in light of our rate of evolution. Your great-grandfather likely woke up each day to a choice between two pairs of trousers and three shirts, had the same breakfast, proceeded to do the same work (very likely work he learned from his father), ate the same things for lunch and dinner – varying by season – repaired things, read, whittled, played music or conversed until dark, and went to bed. In contrast, you wake up to a choice among dozens of clothing items and your day escalates in complexity from there. So it should not be surprising that most decisions are based on snap judgments, fleeting impressions, and assumptions.

Take a decision-overloaded consumer into a mall and they stop thinking entirely. They gravitate to the stores they know and understand, go straight to the racks they’ve been to before, and buy similar items to the ones they already own – varying by season, of course. Offer an overburdened executive a new service that can’t be compared easily to an existing service offering, and he’s likely to dismiss the idea without considering it for more than two seconds.

How do you penetrate the attention of the unthinking individuals who happen to be your prospects? By being familiar even if you’re not known.

If you are a new business, you must have a positioning argument that is instantly clear and comparable to other known offerings. Does this mean you must be just like the competition? Not at all. But you do have to be directly comparable, which makes you immediately understandable. How many of us would give our complete attention to a salesperson who says “We’re just like your current cell phone provider in network and pricing, but we don’t require contracts. You can join us or leave us just as you can your home phone service.” Or imagine how many people would convert to organic diets if someone advertised “we’re priced just like your neighborhood Kroger store only everything we offer is organic.”

Yes, those are my two dream pitches. But this works on more likely offerings as well. A friend owned an art gallery that she pitched as fine art for the middle class income. I feared it would be perceived as condescending, but in fact, it worked very well for her. If I opened a clothing store I would develop one that billed itself as off-the-rack clothing for your custom body.

Consistency is also important in your presentation. If you open a retail bakery, but the outside of your store looks like the dollar store it was before you, you risk alienating the customers who are most likely to pay retail bakery prices. You would think a marketing firm would make sure it demonstrated the very best marketing practices in its own promotion, but I am amazed at how many marketing companies have embarrassingly weak web sites.

Once you have created an initial image with your customers, you must maintain the image. This reinforces the importance of knowing what image you intend to portray in the first place. I often comment on me-too businesses, but what I mean is without conscious image. If you start out by offering a home-town bakery – like the one you grew up with, and a few weeks later you introduce home-delivery pizza, you’ll lose the audience you initially attracted. There’s nothing superior about bakery goods versus pizza, but they don’t attract the same people. Give careful thought to the business you are starting and the directions in which you might wish to grow it so you can evolve along a path that is comfortable to the customers you acquire.

The more subtle aspects of consistency show up in your operations and business policies. If you want to sell high-priced products which earn good margins, but you offer sale prices to attract new customers, you end up with customers who expect you to be on sale - all the time. If your competitive niche is to offer the best customer service in your industry, but you offer the lowest pay in town, guess where the best employees in town are not going to work.

To develop a business with clear differentiation is a talent. To position that business so the familiarity appeals to the rapid decision-maker long enough for the difference to capture their imagination – that is finesse. To do all these things as part of a carefully considered image that is consistent from your strategy to your customer service behavior? That’s branding. 

© 2009. Andrea M. Hill

Do you have a wine snob in your life? Everyone should have at least one. Wine snobs are important, because they teach important lessons about perspective, lessons which we all need from time to time. Right now is a good time for some perspective.

My favorite wine snobbism is that of the correct wine glass. Never a rounded rim, which drops the wine dully on the wrong location of your tongue. Large bowls to allow red wines to breathe, narrow flutes to retain the carbonation of a good bubbly, gently tipped out rims to properly deliver a young white to the correct area of the palate. All good advice of course, meant to enhance the bouquet and taste of a fine wine – or even improve the performance of a lesser wine. But a truly obsessed wine-snob-with-a-glass-issue can turn a simple dinner into an embarrassment of instruction if given a poor choice of glass – and woe to the restaurateur (or host) who does not have a better glass to offer. At this point, one would hope the expostulating oenophile would simply accept that the glass is but a delivery device, and that the true value of the wine can be found in the wine itself – even if you’re drinking it from a jelly jar.

Which brings us to social media. Social media is but a delivery device. For only a very few will it prove to be actual content, and most of those people are already in play. For the rest of us, social media is a delivery device. A marketing delivery device.

Back to the wine for a moment. My nephew and his wife are 20-somethings with two small children. They don’t have much money, but they love fine wine. Not long ago my nephew (while handing me a glass of his newest discovery) said, “Every time we have a little extra money we mean to buy good glasses. But then we decide to spend the money on the wine instead.” He said this as an apology, but I acknowledged that his priorities were in the right place. Given a choice between delivery devices and content (assuming the delivery device isn’t required to get at the content) one should choose the content! I would have been concerned had he offered me Boone's Farm in a fine crystal goblet.

So, back to social media. Right now the internet is rife with Boone's Farm in crystal goblets. It takes very little talent or skill to establish a Facebook account or post what you ate for lunch on Twitter. It takes very little time and almost no money to download your Yahoo mail addresses and send an invite to everyone you know on LinkedIn. In fact, not only can your middle-school student do it – they led the way.

But it takes a great deal of thought, planning, and discipline to integrate social media into your online presence in a way that is meaningful to your customers. It takes time to build customer relationships, and it requires sincerity and genuine concern for getting to know them. Beyond social media, it requires discipline to develop a marketing strategy that delivers relevant information in a timely manner to the right customers.

The fact that marketing media options continue to expand is directly related to the evolution of customer experience – not product superiority – as the surest route to competitive advantage. It is exciting to have so many choices, from radio, TV, newspapers, direct marketing, and events, to websites, blogs, video and podcasts, and yes, social media. But your responsibility, oh marketer, is to take great care in defining, refining, and crafting your message, then selecting the medium that is best suited to each message and your overall brand image.

The ideal wine collection includes different types of glasses to accommodate different wines. But where would you rather spend your time – at the wine bar with gleaming glass racks and substandard wine choices, or in the company of a terrific little bottle of Cabernet Franc and four juice glasses?

© 2009. Andrea M. Hill

People often confuse strategic planning with business planning. They also are unsure of where marketing strategy, sales strategy, sales forecasting, and branding fit in the mix. This podcast tells you how these elements fit together, and in what order (written transcript below). 

Transcript

[00:00:01.210]
I have another podcast for you today. It's taken from a speech I recently did to a large group of small business owners, and the speeches purpose is to teach what a strategic process is from beginning to end. It's an overview of strategy and business planning. What I've discovered is that a lot of people know the words strategy, marketing plan, business plan, but they often confuse those words with one another or perceive more overlap than there is and consequently don't understand what the individual pieces are and how they fit together to serve as a comprehensive approach to business.

[00:00:44.140]
So in 16, OK, maybe 17 minutes, this podcast walks you through strategic planning, through business planning and marketing planning and lets you picture the whole thing. Now I will apologize in advance. The sound has some weird sound artifacts in it. It was very echoey in the original recording. We pulled some of it out, but we couldn't really make it clean. Here is the presentation and I hope it gives you some important clarifications.

[00:01:17.170]
In my experience, people are very confused about business strategy. Just recently, I encountered a new client who had spent a ton of money with another organization creating what she thought was a business strategy, what they told her was a business strategy. But really what it was, was a sort of convoluted and not very productive competitive analysis. Competitive analysis is not strategy. In other cases, people confuse business strategy with business planning. Business planning is very important, but it's the next step.

[00:01:49.150]
After creating a strategy and without a good strategy, it's almost impossible to create a decent business plan. Sometimes people think that business strategy is just for large corporations and large corporations certainly need a solid strategy to run their business and to keep all of the various parts off and far flung from one another in alignment. A small business needs a business strategy even more. Why? Because a small business has far fewer resources to work with. So they have to make sure that every single resource is producing more than twice its own value because they're competing with these big businesses that have a lot more resources than they do.

[00:02:30.400]
So what is a business strategy anyway? Business strategy is a way of establishing your competitive advantage and your differentiation. And once you have those pieces firmly in place, then you can expand those pieces out into a good business plan, a good marketing strategy, a good sales strategy, and then that turns into an operating plan, et cetera. And I'll actually talk you through some of those connections toward the end of this conversation to start with a business strategy.

[00:03:04.270]
You start asking the question, why am I in business? Why did I decide to do this business? What is it I'm selling? What is it I believe in? What is it I want to get out of it. If you don't understand those pieces really well, then you can end up in a situation lots of business owners find themselves in at some point down the road where you're not having fun anymore or where the business isn't delivering what you once thought it would.

[00:03:30.040]
If you're not careful to lay a roadmap and have a clear vision of where you're going, you could end up driving just about anywhere with your business. So the starting point is to establish why you want to be in business. What do you want to get out of it? What is your long term goal for the business? Those things may change over time, but they tend to not change regularly.

[00:03:50.830]
So you start with a clear starting point. You start with a clear view of what your finish point looks like and you start driving down that road. And if those things do evolve or change over time, then you evolve and change your strategic plan. But it's a very intentional process, not an accidental meandering. Meant to end up in Florida, somehow ended up in Maryland sort of issue. So that's your starting point for a business strategy. Once you figure out what you want out of the business and what your long term goals are for the business.

[00:04:30.320]
You identify what things are about that vision for you that can matter to other people. So if your goal if your goal is just to make money, which, by the way, is rarely just the goal, if your goal is just to make money, then the thing that's going to matter to your customers is providing value.

[00:04:53.680]
And it may be just as simple as that. You want to make money, so you're going to provide a lot of value to your customers so you can make money. If your goal is something different, though, making a difference in some way, affecting the world in some way or providing something that nobody else provides or providing in a way that nobody else provides it, that is going to appeal to some customers as well. And remember, you don't need all the customers.

[00:05:19.830]
You just need the right customers. Nobody, not even Wal-Mart has all the customers. So by identifying how your vision and vision for your business relate to certain types of customers and how they will find that vision resonates with them. That's your next step to really contemplate how you connect your view with the needs of others. And that's the starting point of customer attachment or customer relevance. The next thing you do in a strategic plan is you think about all the things you're going to offer.

[00:06:00.080]
It's not just your products. You're offering products, you're offering price points, you're offering certain values. For instance, you may be offering eco friendly products, which is a huge value these days or something that's healthy. Or you may be offering something that's cutting edge in terms of style, or you may be offering something that represents a culture or a group of cultures. All of these things matter to certain groups of people.

[00:06:28.070]
What you offer also has to do with how you sell to people. Where are you available? Some people love to go shopping in boutiques. Other people don't want to walk into them and they only want to shop online. Some people don't really want to have a shopping experience. They want to have an experience that ends up delivering some kind of a product to them. So how you sell and where you sell are part of your competitive offering, how you take care of your customers before, during and after the sale and the ways in which you make yourself available are also part of that offer.

[00:07:01.880]
Some people only want to deal with you face to face. Other people are very comfortable with using technology and reaching across distances. So you're competitive. Analysis begins with identifying all of the attributes about your business that you envision offering and how those attributes will matter to a specific group of people. There is a product for everybody and there is somebody for your product. So if you think about your product, not just in terms of the product itself, but in terms of all the things that you wrap around selling service, meaning availability, price.

[00:07:46.730]
That is the group of attributes that becomes your competitive offering. Once you understand what your competitive offering is, then you do it even deeper work of saying, OK, now I've had an idea of who this customer is, but now I'm going to get real specific. Who is this group of people that are really going to care that I offer one, two, three, four and five in this way? And you do some search, that's your competitive research, it's not so much about comparing yourself to competitors.

[00:08:18.010]
In fact, it's very little about comparing yourself to competitors. It's very much about figuring out how you matter to customers, because when you're selling to customers, you're not really selling against whoever you perceive to be your direct competitors. You're selling against that customer's perceptions of what else they'd rather do with their money. And that's a much, much bigger world than just selling against a particular competitor in your market. So how do you get a customer to decide to part with their money by mattering to them and what matters to customers is that whole list of attributes that we just talked about.

[00:09:00.250]
So that is the bulk of your competitive analysis now in the strategic planning process. There is a point where you do pay attention to the prices. Other things are sold out because you want to understand what's out there in the world and what feels relative to customers, what things look like from the customer's perspective. So you do do a survey of what's out there and what the customers perceive as available. But for the most part, your competitive analysis is about being competitive from the customer's viewpoint for their dollars, given all the other things they could choose to do with them.

[00:09:42.060]
Once you've completed that part of the strategic planning. Then it's time to start putting those pieces together into this compelling argument that talks about who you are, what you make or what you offer that makes you different and why that matters. And you explore through the strategic planning process how you're going to make those statements not only in the products that you make, but in the materials that you use to make them, or if you buy and sell products in the vendors that you buy from.

[00:10:15.100]
What are those relationships about? What are the things you expect from them? You look at how you're going to apply, who you are, what you make or what you do and what makes you different and why that matters. You're going to apply that to. The actual product specifications, the way you sell, the way you reach out and find customers and you create this really compelling, it's not so much a story, it's more like a guidebook for how you're going to run your business to be consistent at every single point with this set of attributes that matters to a particular set of customers.

[00:10:58.200]
From there, in your strategic planning, you identify how you're going to find more of those customers, what that customer strategy looks like, what your product strategy looks like, and then you tie it all back together with some measurements that say these are the things that we have to accomplish. And if we accomplish that, if we achieve these measurements, then we will know we're being successful in our strategy. That's what a strategic process is all about. And when you do it well, you literally end up with a handbook for running your business.

[00:11:37.850]
And that handbook will inform not only you, but anyone else that you bring in to work with you or any contractors that you work with. It's a really compelling tool for keeping you focused on what's important and for learning to set aside the things that are interesting but are not particularly relevant to what you've decided to accomplish because you don't have unlimited resources if you had unlimited resources and you could just hire new people all the time and go after all these ideas that you have, but you don't have unlimited resources.

[00:12:11.860]
So you have to get really focused on doing your strategy really well. And that's how you make money. So now you've got this strategy book and it says who you are, what you make or what you do that makes you different and why that matters and identifies which customers you're going to be going after. And it also identifies which types of products you will and will not make and which types of services you will offer and the way you're going to sell to people and the brand presence.

[00:12:44.890]
It's the beginning of your brand presence in the market. That's your strategic plan. So now what do you do with it? Well, now you make a business plan and that business plan starts with a sales forecast. It says, OK, based on this strategy, what do we think we can sell in year one, year two in years three through five? Now, your one should be a pretty good estimate of what's possible. Year two, three, five and up a little fuzzier, but again, the kind of a road map for you that keep you focused on the future so you don't get too far off track.

[00:13:18.660]
Once you create that sales plan, you can create a business plan. And the business plan says, OK, now what kinds of costs am I going to incur in my business to pull off this strategy? And while you're making your business plan, you're going to say, oh, wait a minute, I have to decide how much I'm spending on marketing dollars. And at that point, you can decide I'm either going to set a hard budget for my marketing dollars and learn how to work within it, or I better stop for a minute and make my marketing strategy and then I'll come back and finish the business plan with good marketing dollars place.

[00:13:54.840]
I kind of like that approach because when you do a marketing strategy, it helps you rethink your sales forecast, it helps you identify both opportunities and risks that you weren't thinking about before. So you step aside and you make a marketing strategy and your marketing strategy. You say, what kinds of things must I do to achieve the sales numbers that are in my sales forecast in order to achieve my strategic vision? And how will I bring across from my strategy who we are, what we do or what we make that makes us different and why we matter, how are we going to get that message across if every single marketing thing we do, whether it's social media or television advertising or signage or a brochure.

[00:14:49.480]
So you make your marketing strategy and you tested and say, do I really think this is the right marketing plan and strategy to achieve the sales forecast that I need to achieve my strategy? And at that point, you can go back to your business plan and say, OK, my marketing strategy has me spending this many dollars each month in the first year and this many dollars total in the second, third or fourth year. And now you have a business plan with solid numbers informed by a sales plan and a marketing plan because the sales plan tells you how much revenue you're going to have to pay for things in the business plan.

[00:15:26.000]
And the marketing plan tells you how much money you're going to spend to get those sales because nobody gets sales without spending some money. And also in your business plan is your human resources plan. And your human resources plan identifies when you're going to need to hire people and how much you're probably going to need to spend to get them. That's your business plan. And the one thing we haven't talked about is your brand and your brand really is the element that should be developed right after you're finished with the strategy, because the brand is.

[00:16:04.190]
Sort of the outward communication of the strategy, it's the pieces of your strategy that you pull forward to communicate to the world, to help them recognize who you are, what you make or what you do that makes you different and why you matter.

[00:16:21.500]
And the brand has to be that close to the strategy because a brand has to be very authentic to matter to your audience. So the brand should never be done without a strategy and it should always be the first thing you do after you finish your strategy and then picture this when you do your marketing plan, you already have you already have your brand established. You know how you're going to deploy that brand across every part of your business, because the brand isn't just about your marketing materials.

[00:16:52.160]
The brand is about how you talk to customers and the service policies that you offer your customers and what your packages look like when they go out the door and what your post sales service is like. So your brand flows out of strategy. In fact, everything flows out of the strategy. You start with your strategy, then you make your brand book and from there you are able to make a business plan and a marketing plan.

[00:17:20.390]
And now you have all of the guidelines you need to run your business intelligently with good cash planning and with an eye constantly on the future so that you make sure that your day to day decisions don't knock you off course and send you off to the wrong place.

[00:17:40.350]
So that's what the strategy is, it's the process of identifying who you are, what you do or what you make that makes you different and why you matter and helping you attach those ideas to a set of customers and a set of products and services that will be compelling to those customers. And then that strategy is used to create the other elements of your business.

[00:18:03.670]
And if you're not doing all of those pieces, you're probably spending more money than you need to be running your business while at the same time selling less of what you need to fund your business.

[00:18:18.120]
And of course, that's the last thing anyone wants to be spending more on their business while selling less. So there you have it, an overview of the strategic process as it relates to the other business planning processes. And if you don't have all of those pieces in place or if you have even none of those pieces in place yet, don't worry about it. Just get started. You can run your business while improving your planning and trim the sail along the way.

[00:18:50.010]
You might as well, because the time's going to go by anyway. Right. And at the end of that time, wouldn't you rather have made tremendous progress toward great business planning and a refinement of your business operations? So this has been the works blog as a podcast for today, thank you very much for joining me. I'm Andrea Hill.

Update 5/6/2015 - you can now download an update of this article and a 24-page tradeshow planner free when you sign up for our email list.

I’ve worked a lot of trade shows. Until 2007, I exhibited at 3-4 major trade events per year for 30 years, most of them for at least a week each. I’ve worked trade shows in the apparel, electronics, publishing, video, and jewelry industries. Since 2007 I’ve worked just as many trade shows, but it’s been on the other side of the exhibit – walking aisles, watching exhibitors, and finding new sources. All that time, measured in foot-years, has given me important insights about what to expect from and how to work a trade show. I teach these concepts a few times a year in seminars, but here are a few of the main take-aways for those of you frantically preparing for the next event.

Is there a Return on Investment for Trade Shows?

Yes, but to be successful you need to understand what trade shows are good at.

Tradeshows are good at providing exhibitors with qualified leads. That is the trade show’s most important function.

The second most important function of trade shows is to create a personal connection between a company and its qualified leads. This personal connection provides a more tangible foundation for marketing and sales follow-up.

The third most important function of trade shows is on-site sales.

That third bullet may surprise you. Most exhibitors measure their trade-show success by at-show sales. Some of you remember to add on immediately-after-the-show sales as a success metric. But trade shows aren’t always a great place to engage in the sales cycle – particularly if your sales cycle requires a certain amount of trust-building, which takes time.

Remember that the primary goal of buyers at trade shows is to take in as much information as they possibly can in a condensed time-frame. The larger the show, the greater the pressure to keep moving. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to make appointments and sit down and write orders. It just means that there is even more value to be had at trade shows if you know how to work them. Here are 10 important pointers for how to get even more out of your trade show experience.

1. Set lead goals and daily targets. You probably already set sales goals, so I don’t need to tell you that. But have you set lead goals? Have you identified how many new potential customers you want to make even brief contact with, contact sufficient to yield their contact information for future marketing efforts? Head into every trade show with a lead goal. Make it a contest among your staff and award a prize to the person who captures the most qualified leads. Have a tracking system in place, and measure your lead-collecting success each day relative to your goal.
   
   
2. Be more focused in your pre-show and at-show promotions. Many companies offer a small gift to everyone who comes by their booth. Consider shifting some of that budget to a special gift available only to your most valuable prospects and buyers. Let them know that you have a gift for them, tell them what it is, and make sure they know they must visit your booth to receive it. Even if you only spend a few minutes with each customer and prospect on your high-value list, those few minutes will reinforce your face, your brand image, and your relationship in that person’s mind.
   
   
3. Be specific in your information gathering. Do you know which customer information helps you most when trying to sell to them later? If you don’t, think about it now! If you’ve taken my strategy course you already know about the Critical Customer Questions that matter to your brand. If you don’t, here’s a quick exercise: Identify the characteristics that are common among your top 20% performing customers. Are they in particular geographic zones? Do they serve particular types of customers? Do they share similar needs? Once you identify those characteristics, frame questions around them. These are the questions you should slip into conversation with your trade show visitors. This will help you separate the cool leads from the hot ones. 
   
   
4. Be interested! Start by asking questions rather than immediately showing your product. Draw customers in by showing interest in them. Not only will you have a greater impact on your visitors, but you will also be able to quickly identify those who are not viable leads.
   
   
5. Be interesting! Unlike other marketing media, trade shows offer you a face-to-face experience with prospects. Learn to use this to your advantage! Consider offering demonstrations, experiences, stories, or other captivating elements that will engage the senses and draw your prospects in. Standing there and smiling is lovely, but rarely sufficient.
   
   
6. Work on your trade show skills. The most successful lead-gatherers at trade shows are the most sophisticated sales people. This doesn’t happen by accident – it takes practice. Prepare in advance the types of open-ended questions most likely to engage a walk-by or to keep a visitor in conversation for a few moments longer. Commit your line details and your prices to memory (make sure your show staff is equally trained). Role-playing builds muscle memory, and you want even your fist hour to be productive. Practice your trade show sales technique with a friend before the show to hit the ground running. Trade show success requires that you be able to gather information quickly and effectively, so do your trade show training.
   
   
7. Master Trade Show Graphics. I walk several jewelry shows each year and every booth features pictures of . . . wait for it . . . jewelry. Well, yes, of course you sell jewelry. You’re at a jewelry show. While some jewelry is clearly more differentiated than others, product pictures alone are insufficient to draw trade show attention. Trade show attendees are notorious for glazing over quickly. Make sure your trade show graphics include a few critical bullet points of information, or a question, or a statement; anything that quickly and clearly spells out your differentiation. Use your booth space as a marketing vehicle, not as a decoration.
   
   
8. Manage your image. Standing, smiling, out front when possible, greeting, and gathering are important trade show behaviors. In all my years of working trade shows from inside the booth I had one rule: No booth staff sits. Ever. Is it difficult? Yes, it’s definitely difficult. Is it worth it? Yes, for both the booth staff and the customers. Trade show days are long and even physically painful. If you have ever sat down at 2:30 in the afternoon – with three-and-a-half hours to go before the end of the day – you know that your energy crashes the moment you sit. This means the rest of the day is even more painful for you, and you lose energetic engagement with the customers during those last hours. You probably spent a lot of money to be at that show. Don’t sit down 20 feet from the finish line.
   
   
9. Have a data plan. You need tools – either at the booth or at your office – for managing the data you gather. Think about them ahead of time. Customer ran out of business cards? Snap a picture of their last one. Snap a picture of a badge and compare it later to the attendee report the show provides. Even better, snap these images in Evernote, where you can also add notes about your conversation or observations. Best – make voice notes in Evernote throughout the day. It’s faster than typing, you can keep your eyes out on the attendees, you’ll have less risk of forgetting an important insight, and you’ll have a treasure-trove of valuable data to mine when you return to your office.
   
   
10. Analyze your leads every night. Do this before you head out for dinner and drinks. Why? Because by tomorrow morning you’ll have forgotten all those conversations. It’s best to do this throughout the day – making notes about people you spoke with, their answers to your questions, and your observations about the interaction. But in addition to real-time note taking (and sometimes we know that’s just impossible), go over your lists of leads each evening and make any additional notes you can remember. You won’t remember everything, but you’ll have a lot better data than if you skipped this step.

When you return home from your trade event, begin the follow-up activity immediately. Sort your leads into ‘hot’, ‘warm’, and ‘cold’ categories. Schedule time in the next week to call the hot leads. Put the cold leads into your marketing database for some priming before you try pursuing those sales more actively.

If you follow these steps, you’ll see your RTS metric (return-on-trade-show) increase dramatically. And that’s good, because after aging eight or nine foot-years in a single week, you deserve the success.

• Individuality is in, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses is out.
• Environmental stewardship is in, unconscious consumerism is out.
• Social awareness is in, ostentatious wealth is out.
• Thoughtful acquisition is in, conspicuous consumption is out.

No wonder luxury jewelry is having a hard time.

Which isn’t news. We’ve been watching the closures, consolidations, and down-sizings of luxury jewelry stores for years now. But it’s still newsworthy, because luxury jewelry hasn’t carved a new, meaningful path yet, an approach that responds to these changing values which not only refuse to go away, but instead, continue to build momentum.

Hedda Schupak conducted a very important interview in the Centurion Newsletter this week with third-generation "überluxury jeweler” Jonathan Dorfman, who recently closed his ultra-luxury jewelry store in Boston. Everyone in the jewelry industry should read this interview (read it here). The article addresses the issues of changing consumer tastes, social awareness, and values. But it also points to an element that has been masking the true impact of the changes in the US consumer. Societies where ostentatious wealth and social competition still have some oxygen — China, Russia, and oil-rich Arabic nations — are now suffering economically. During the past ten years these populations have bolstered the luxury jewelry market while the American consumer was turning her attention to other things. Now, as this foreign buyer steps away from the cash-register, the dramatic changes in our domestic market are painfully obvious.

The Solution is Already Here

There is a jewelry offering that is highly individualistic, often pays greater attention to sustainability, and delivers an experience of art, hand-craft, and the type of preciousness that is handed from generation to generation. It is designer jewelry, art jewelry, jewelry made by master jewelers in their studios. For the conscientious consumer, the story of fine jewelry made by artisans who still get their hands dirty is a compelling story; a story of skill built over years, a story of craftspeople who opted out of the more typical salaried/hourly path to pursue a life of art and creativity, a story of artists who have a passion to create beautiful, wearable things.  Craftsmanship is in. Stories are in.

Retailers totally focused on selling pearl button earrings, 1.0 tcw white diamond studs, 3-stone rings, and 4Cs-driven engagement rings cannot engage the new consumer. Manufacturers focused on creating the same designs they always have, en masse in China, can’t either. And by new consumer I don’t mean just the Millennials. I also mean the women my age (50s – 60s) who have changed right along with our young adult children, who often look at life very differently than we did when we were first starting out.

The Jewelry is Out There

Of course, artisan/designer jewelry is not new. It’s out there; online, in boutiques, in museum stores and specialty stores . . . . and sometimes, in jewelry stores, though the list of jewelry stores that truly focus on artisan/designer jewelry is small. Everyone in the artisan/designer segment of the jewelry business shares the same list of about 200 stores that truly get how to sell artisan/designer jewelry. There are several thousand more jewelry stores offering personalization of jewelry through customization and/or original design, many of them using CAD. Still, as an industry we are doing a poor job of telling this story to consumers, so unless they stumble into the store or onto the website, they just don’t know how exciting, beautiful, meaningful, and relevant jewelry can be.

Let's Tell the Story of Artisan/Designer Jewelry

The dairy industry suffered badly after the low-fat movement began. Suddenly, dairy was out due to a change in consumer values. The industry realized that it had to respond with a broader message, and they did, with “Milk. It does a body good.”

As an industry, we should shift to talking about jewelry in terms of art. We should be talking about its hand-made aspects, and how exciting it is when we combine the newest technologies (CAD, scanning) with old-world techniques. We should be telling the stories of the people who make and design jewelry.

We must be investing in and committed to sustainability, protecting the environment and the communities dependent on mineral and metal extraction for a living. And then, when this aspect of our industry is authentic, we should be telling that story loud and clear.

Am I suggesting one of the jewelry industry associations or magazines should step up and do this for us? No. I think they can play a role, an important role, but I believe that all of us — retailers, manufacturers, diamantaires, designers, consultants, everyone — need to embrace where consumers are now, get on board, and start telling a different story.

Individuality is in.

Social awareness and environmental stewardship are in.

Thoughtful acquisition is in.

Craftsmanship is in.

Stories are in.

Artisan jewelry is in.

Let’s all get out there and stay relevant.

Last night my Motorola smartphone crapped out. Well, specifically the camera quit and could not be revived. As a person with a 3-day old grandson, no camera-phone was a no-go. So off I headed to the Verizon store.

Let me go on the record and say that I have always liked our Verizon store. A lot. Not the one in the next town over, not the ones I've tried in Milwaukee, not the ones I've run into in Chicago. Ours.  In smallish West Bend, Wisconsin. The people there have always been knowledgeable and helpful and fun.

So when I walked into the store today I got nervous. It was clear that something had changed. The stacks of inventory in the center of the store were gone, and in their place were comfy leather seating groupings and little tables. Fewer phones were on display, the massive Verizon electronic pay-station was gone. But I saw a few familiar faces, so I was encouraged.

I asked right away about the changes, and the staff members were more than enthusiastic about sharing them. Here is the bulleted list of changes, in the order they were shared:

1. The group that had been running the store bought the store from Verizon in order to run it as a franchise.
   
   
2. They wanted to offer only the excellent phones, the phones they knew the customers would be entirely satisfied to own. So they slimmed down the inventory to include only the phones they felt good about offering.  They are still happy to order anything a customer wants from Verizon, but what they are willing to promote and endorse is far more limited.
   
   
3. They took all their salespeople off commission and put them on salary (this is salespeople enthusiastically telling me this detail). This allows them to focus on selling the right phones to their customers for the right reasons, not because they get a SPIFF or higher commissions on otherwise less worthy models. This also allows them to spend the time each customer needs.

My phone selection process was easy, because I already knew what I wanted (HTC One M8 - I'm already in love with it). But the checkout process had changed. Paperwork had been dramatically reduced, the salesperson prepared my rebate for me - right down to a stamped, addressed envelope - and the transaction took less than half the time it had taken in the past.

I don't know how they reduced the transaction time, but clearly that was an objective as they took over the store. Whatever their solution was, it certainly worked for me. The fact that I left with a few pieces of paper and not reams of it made me - and the environment - very happy. And preparing my rebate for me? That's just a big wow. It makes sense, because as a franchise they can focus on their objective of making customers happy, and not feel torn by a Verizon corporate marketing perspective that counts on a certain percentage of customers finding the rebate process too complicated to complete.

The last thing that happened paid for my phone today and the next few upgrades too. My company has 10 devices and over 30 gigs of data per month on our Verizon plan. That's expensive. My sales rep asked me if I had a little time to review and possibly reduce my bill. I was skeptical. Several months ago I went into that store with that very request, a promotion for reduced Verizon plans in my hand. After 45 minutes of looking at the Verizon system, trying to find a way to make that plan work for me, the sales rep and I both gave up.

Because my experience today had so far been excellent, I told her sure, give it a try. In less than 10 minutes she had reduced my bill by $260.00 per month. She saved me $3,120/year in 10 minutes. I am still smiling.

This store, now called Wireless Zone, teaches several important lessons to small business owners everywhere:

• Know what's important to you. In the case of Wireless Zone, the answer is clearly customer satisfaction and quality. It's so clear that I, as a customer, can speak to their values. Can your customers speak to your values as clearly?
  
  
• Align your merchandise strategy with your core business values. To do this they eliminated junk phones and a broad range of wireless toys, enabling them to focus on the core, quality products that would be sure to keep customers happy and loyal.
  
  
• Align your human resource strategy with your service goals. Wireless Zone put sales staff on salary instead of on commission. If their management approach is good, this should reduce turnover significantly, which will in turn ensure that the sales staff becomes increasingly knowledgeable and develops personal relationships.

I'm very impressed by The Wireless Zone in Wisconsin. Their business values and strategy are so transparent that we as customers can see what matters to them and why they should matter to us. That's a successful approach to small business. Let's all aspire to the same.

Once you are armed with insights about your customers' behavior both as shoppers and as online participants you can flesh out your marketing strategy.

Look backward to look forward.

Get the list of every marketing activity you did last year: trade shows, retail shows, print ads, digital ads, billboards, press releases, radio spots, Facebook promotions, website promotions, events . . . and consider how well each promotion did for you.

What determines a successful promotion? A successful promotion is one that achieves the goals you set for it. If your goal for an event was to get 200 new customers to visit your establishment, then 210 non-employee guests at your party is probably a success. Some marketing efforts are easier to measure than others, but you must take a stab at measuring each one, deeming them successful, unsuccessful, or somewhere in-between.

For those efforts that you deemed successful, do you have reason to believe that repeating them this year will generate a similar level of success? Some marketing plans are terrific . . . but only once. Others should become regularly scheduled efforts.

For efforts that you deemed unsuccessful, can you identify what went wrong or what you could have done better? Determine what, if anything, you could have done to change the outcome, and decide whether or not to try again with new insights.

Set goals for next year

Success and failure can only be determined in relation to goals. So set goals for sales next year and make them as measurable as possible: Total sales in dollars, total sales in units, total new dealers opened, total new customers, profitability in either dollars or percentage points, growth percent, total new customers, X% increased volume from existing customers - these are the types of goals that drive a marketing strategy.

Once you've set your goals, you're ready to determine your messages. You should focus on one or two messages that you want to get across to your customers and potential customers over the course of the year. These are your core messages, and are geared to helping your customers recognize your big difference, the reason they should buy from you and not someone else. Once you have a firm handle on those one or two (max) messages, you're ready to decide which marketing efforts will help you deliver your message(s) and achieve your goals.

Look at your marketing options by category

Your plan should include a healthy mix of different marketing elements: paid advertising - both print and digital, social media, public relations, email and direct mail, and events. I like to lay this out month by month like a giant editorial calendar. In each month we visualize which marketing elements we will use, how much they will cost, and how we will be conveying the core message(s).

Don't worry about planning out every social media post - that would drive all the spontaneity out of your social media campaign. For your Facebook and Twitter feeds, come up with a significant element each week that you will use to convey your core message(s), and then let the rest flow as it usually does.

Once you've laid it all out, taking into consideration your current customer behavior, how you want to influence or modify that behavior, and which marketing efforts worked and did not work in the past year, you can add all the dollars up and there's your marketing strategy.

Is this all there is to marketing strategy?

No, of course not. A superbly executed marketing strategy has many more elements to it. But if every small business owner would just do the activities of this and the previous two blog posts, it would significantly improve the efficacy of his or her marketing. By a lot. And the benefits gained will help pay for a more sophisticated marketing effort in the years to come.

I am fixated lately on the topic of outstanding customer service. As a road-warrior and constant consumer of restaurant, hotel, car rental, coffee shop, salon, apparel, and convenience store services domestically and abroad, in community sizes ranging from tiny Iowa towns to London, I suspect I encounter a reasonable approximation of what customer service means today. What I have encountered is a strange dichotomy.

Customer Service Out, Customer Service Culture In

On the one hand, excellent customer service is no longer treated as a differentiator by consumers. Twenty years ago, a business could set itself apart by touting its fantastic service. Advertising one’s customer service prowess or awards for customer service meant something to consumers, and it was often excellent service that businesses chose to feature in taglines. Today, excellent service is a minimum standard necessary to compete. Boasting about or branding with excellent customer service is like advertising an automobile and saying, "It runs! It goes up to 75 mph!"

On the other hand, excellent customer service can be very difficult to find, even in the luxury sector. At a time when consumer expectations regarding service are higher than ever, why aren’t businesses stepping up and delivering?

Because excellent – no, outstanding – customer service is one of the hardest things to do. You can’t automate it. You can’t script it or cookie-cutter it. You can’t ensure it with policy or rules. Excellent customer service is about people, and people run on motivation.

When I refer to customer service, I’m not just talking about direct personal interactions. Think of all the people in non-customer facing roles that have significant influence over how the customer feels about the company:

• The web developer that cares about customer experience creates shopping interfaces that are simple, fast, and efficient and filter or search functions that quickly provide the right answers.
• The systems person that creates strong data warehouse tools helps customer-facing team-members quickly find and deliver information to interested customers.
• The purchasing staffer who does such thoughtful forecasting and planning that the right products are in the right places at the right times – so customers can find them.
• The CFO who supports the creation of simple, easy return policies to ensure customer satisfaction.
• The marketing team member who thoughtfully manages customer lists to ensure that the most relevant email campaigns go to each list subscriber.
• The production worker who looks for the tiniest errors to ensure a customer never finds one.
• The shipping clerk who packs every box as if the contents are fragile and going to his own mother.

To deliver outstanding customer service, a company must motivate every single employee in every single role to think about how his or her work will affect the customer.

Outstanding Customer Service Starts with the Right Ingredients

I do not believe in the adage you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. But I do believe that our essential ingredients – personality, character, and self-discipline – are fairly set by the time we reach adulthood. The truth is, some people are wired to deliver an outstanding customer experience because they are empathetic, interested in others, and motivated to serve. If the people you hire don’t start with those essential characteristics, no amount of training, cajoling, or threatening will induce them to become passionate service people.

But it’s more complicated than that, isn’t it? Because those aren’t the only ingredients you need. When you hire a sales person who must deliver outstanding customer service, they must combine empathy and service-orientation with self-confidence and the ability to influence someone to part with their cash. On the other hand, if you are hiring a nurse, you need a person who combines empathy and service orientation with the ability to handle tremendous pressure, mete out pain, and deliver difficult news with pragmatic calm, all while keeping the patients from becoming frightened. An airline attendant must combine empathy and service orientation with vigilance. These are three very different recipes.

The Human Resource function has evolved to do a much better job of finding the best ingredients and matching them with roles and teams, and many new business tools and practices are available to support best practices in hiring, onboarding, and training. But are most businesses using these tools? Unscientific research (i.e., observation) would suggest that they are not. If you invest in one area of improvement for your service-dependent business this year, do a better job of matching the right people with the right teams and jobs.

Pre-Employment Assessments that Help You Build a Customer Service Culture

First You Solve the Processes . . .

The full saying goes, first you solve the process, then you solve the people. The source of most people-problems at work is process problems. If your processes are unnecessarily complex, cumbersome, inconsistent or – worse! – nonexistent, your people cannot give consistent – let alone outstanding – service. Make sure that your business processes are simple, effective, complete (which means no opportunities to drop the ball), documented, and trained. In that order. Let’s do that again:

1. Simple
2. Effective
3. Complete (this means that each process design is complete, from beginning to completion and monitoring)
4. Documented
5. Trained

Walk into any company that delivers consistently outstanding customer service, and you’ll find excellent process management. Why? Because the end result – outstanding customer service – is dependent on each company defining what service means according to its own brand and standards, defining the services that deliver the required level of care, and being able to train all employees involved in each service area to deliver the same services in the same ways.

Outstanding Service Comes from Effective Management

Good management is essential to business success. Too many businesses approach management as a personality trait, or the thing we do when we’re creating schedules, granting time off, or creating reports. In fact, great management comes from two terms that are not terribly in vogue these days, concepts that seem related to old, hierarchical models of business: command and control. But when you break these concepts down and examine the details, you see how important they are.

Command

I use the term command because it’s still the term that is taught in business schools and recognized as one of the pillars of management. Other effective terms would be influence, motivate, and inspire. In fact, “lead” is the concept we’re going after, but in management theory terms, leadership is more than just this element. So, what is a manager supposed to be doing in this regard? Command is about having a clear vision, communicating it to the team, and ensuring that the team achieves its objectives. Communication skill is critical, because constant, effective communication helps a group of people embrace and share a common set of goals. A manager with a grasp on command creates an environment where people understand what is expected, have enough information to buy into the goals and objectives, are excited about the pursuit of excellence, and are clear that failure to deliver on the team’s goals will result in consequences.

Control

Control is not about controlling people – it’s about controlling the way in which the work is done and whether or not the work is done correctly. Processes, procedures, efficiency, and structure are the domain of control. Good managers not only communicate expectations and motivate people to do as required (command), they also create project plans, delegate activities, evaluate, monitor, measure, and share progress with their teams.

If you’re not being successful in the management areas of command and control, then it is unlikely that your team is capable of delivering outstanding customer service.

Culture is the Binding Agent

A company’s culture is the glue that binds all the important elements of the company together. A strong, positive business culture reinforces the brand, and in the best examples, defines it. The culture of a workplace determines and reflects employee commitment. To create a company culture that will nurture and serve customers, you must have a culture that nurtures and serves employees. Please don’t confuse nurturing with coddling – they are not the same. Employees want to be treated as professionals, with dignity and respect. Study after study demonstrates that employees who are trusted and expected to perform admirably will rise to the occasion.

A strong, positive business culture is created by thoughtful leadership, the right people in the right roles, good processes, strong management, and positive, goal-oriented behavior.

Every business culture is different, but all should include these ingredients. Without a strong culture, you cannot achieve outstanding customer service.

I’ve heard people blame today’s lack of customer service on the continued automation of service, reduced congeniality in society, or on an angrier, more demanding workforce. There may be particles of truth in all that, but I don't think those are the core reasons. Rather, what I observe in both the businesses I patronize and those I consult, is that the frantic pace of business combined with frequent economic and social uncertainty causes business owners and executives to work in a very tactical manner. This leaves little time for thinking about and managing the basics, and does not lend itself to long-term thinking and planning. Which, among other problems, erodes the company’s ability to deliver outstanding customer service.

Delivering outstanding customer service is one of the most critical things a business must do, particularly at a time when consumers expect nothing less. The good news is that dedication to known management fundamentals is half the battle. What will be harder for many companies is the creation of a strong, positive business culture. In fact, strong, positive business culture may be the differentiator of the future. A worthy, rewarding goal to shoot for.

Ready to hire outstanding customer service people? Use Andrea Hill's highly informative, immediately useful handbook, "The How-to-Hire-Handbook for Small Business Owners," and make better hiring decisions today!

We humans aren't particularly fond of change. The status quo feels safe, and it allows us to operate on auto-pilot. But while auto-pilot is excellent for basic functions like breathing and walking, it's generally not a terrific way to navigate one's life.

On a personal level, living too much on auto-pilot means we miss out on living in-the-moment and enjoying the beauty, enlightenment, and humor that comes from experiencing (and not just passing through) the every-day. On a business level, living too much on auto-pilot is more dire; at some point, a business on auto-pilot simply dies of its own apathy.

Some businesses can't avoid change. If you own an electronics store, if you are a software developer, if you own an apparel boutique - you've had no choice but to embrace change. For one thing, the products keep changing. For another, the customers have demanded new sales channels. But somehow the jewelry industry has successfully insulated itself against change - not all of it, but too much of it - and it's now time to come late to the party or to fade out like dinosaurs. It's past time for change.

There are many reasons why jewelry stores have rationalized change avoidance. The inventory is expensive! But can you imagine walking into a Lexus dealer and not finding the new models, colors, and options? Their inventory is certainly expensive. Our security requirements are high! But Apple products have a high street-value, and still they found a way to make their products completely interactive in the store. It takes a long time to become an expert in selling jewelry! Though one doesn't learn to sell cars, complex software, or computers overnight either.

I think the worst thing that ever happened to the jewelry industry was that it was an island for so long. Lack of competition makes one complacent. And when competition started becoming more of an issue, the jewelry industry reacted by carving out regions for exclusives, demanding that suppliers not sell on their own websites, and competing on price. All recipes for a deferred disaster.

If I have totally irritated you by now, then I am not writing this column for you. If I have scared but energized you, then there is tremendous potential for your business.

I have spent the past week in Las Vegas, at the JCK and Couture shows. I have had dozens of meetings with clients and prospective clients, walked the floor, hung out at booths, and observed from corners. One thing is abundantly clear. The time for change is past.

If you're curious about what must happen now, in order to maintain an industry that has an independent retail core and continues to define what makes fine jewelry fine jewelry, here are a few things for you to consider implementing and embracing:

1. Stop commoditizing! We've turned jewelry into the sum of its parts, and that's tragic. If you took a pile of metal, leather, plastic, and electronics to a Mercedes dealer and asked them to make you a Mercedes for the cost of the labor, it would never happen. That paragraph probably barely makes sense to you! Yet we do that every day with jewelry.  The entire industry is complicit in this activity. How did we get to the point of competing on price? Because we didn't effectively execute the next 5 points, so price was all that was left.

2. Respect Brands. Your own, and those of your vendors. There was a time when a jewelry store could take in loads of generic merchandise and play it like it was all the store's brand, but the store's brand may have been weak to begin with, and anyway, that doesn't fly any more. Consumers look for and want to engage with brands. Build a brand for your store that is one part sales and service, two parts merchandise, three parts stories, and four parts character and identity. Your merchandising strategy needs to celebrate the brands and designers you have available to you, and you need to be energetic and creative enough to build a brand for your  store that goes beyond the basics.

3. Leverage technology. In the shop (CAD/CAM, Laser Welders, growing models, and soon - powdered metals!), in your marketing department, in your merchandising, in your management, and on the sales floor. You are no longer competing with the jewelry store on the other side of town. You are competing with jewelry stores across the country. And yes, you are competing with your own vendors. Jewelry is everywhere! You can fight a losing battle to hold onto exclusive products and territory, or you can jump into the action and find out how to be your target customers' preferred supplier no matter what. You need technology to do this. If you are just focused on a narrow, local market you can probably (possibly?) get away with antiquated systems. But remember that even if you don't feel like competing with the rest of the world, the rest of the world feels like competing with you.

4. Get educated. For generations it has been possible to DIY small business. But not any more. Small business owners are increasingly the products of large corporate management environments with MBAs, exiting corporate life to pursue their own dreams of business success. So you're not just competing against big businesses, you're competing against ever-more-sophisticated small businesses. It's never too late to get business training or formal education in business. If your business is heading into a second, third, or fourth generation, make sure your successors are getting terrific educations, and encourage them to work for demanding corporate environments and get rigorous training (from someone who is not a parent) before they step back into the family business.

5. Be a Merchant. Retail has always been about building a shopping experience, and the products are a defining part of that experience. Merchandise selection must be exciting, constantly changing, fueling the perception of the brand, and compelling. Is that difficult? Sure it is. But if you wanted easy you'd be doing a 9-to-5 in a cubicle somewhere. Is it challenging? Yup. You'll have to get creative about turning inventory, just like auto dealers and high-end luxury environments have to do (all retailers, really).

6. Be a Marketer. If you're spending less than 6% of your retail sales volume on marketing and sales efforts (not including salaries and commissions), then you're underspending. Truthfully, if you want to just maintain your current volume and visibility, the spend should be more like 6% - 9%. Do you want to expand your market and grow? Plan on 10% - 13%. That means you must have a brand that creates desire and mitigates price competition (see #2 above), you must have an exciting merchandise perspective (see #5 above), and you must have decent margins (see #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5 above). Marketing is expensive, yes, but so is going out of business.

I was part of the video industry from the very beginning when it was filled with Ma & Pa retailers. I participated in opening the first two Blockbuster stores. I watched the independent video owners disappear, largely due to similar conditions we see in the jewelry industry today. Over a decade later, I was part of a group that was brought to Blockbuster to help it figure out its next thing (which looked a lot like Netflix), but they passed on that. Apathy, failure to market, failure to differentiate, failure to brand, and failure to embrace and use technology (and keep changing with it) all played a role in that industry's rapid changes.

But that's not the change we want. The change we want is the opportunity to define our future as a jewelry industry. And we can. Let's get to it.

I tend to have very vivid dreams, and when I wake up they’re still with me. But have you ever had a dream and tried to explain it to someone else? It’s difficult to do, because dreams rarely have a clear beginning, middle, or end, and the storylines tend to be chaotic. No matter how much vivid detail you recall from your dreams, it is extremely difficult to explain them in waking life.

I have noticed that many small business owners have more of a dream for their business than a story.

That dream may be something that is clear in their own minds, but it’s very difficult to convey to anyone else. Even if you are a solopreneur, your business vision needs to be more story and less dream. Why? Because business strategy depends on a clear business vision, and you cannot create a vision without a well articulated brand story.

For 2016, resolve to figure out your business story. Unlike a dream, a story always has a destination – an end result that is clear to you (the storyteller) from the beginning. Every step of your story is a building block leading to that conclusion. Your story should include interesting, unique elements that draw in the listener and make them want to know what happens next. Perhaps most important of all, your story should be so exciting and motivating to you, that during those times when the action in your story feels like it’s lagging, you can step back and remember where you’re going with it and remain enthusiastic and committed.

If you know your story, you have a vision. If you have a vision, you can create a strategy. Resolve to wrap your mind around your story now, so you can spend the rest of the year telling it.

[00:00:02.390]
I'm at the Coral Ridge Mall in Iowa City, Iowa. I've been studying the Helzberg jewelry store here. They're doing something better than almost every other retail store in the country. And we wanted to understand it, but that's a topic for another day. What I wanted to share is how busy this mall is. Today is a Tuesday. And since the mall opened at 10 a.m., it's been busy traffic throughout the mall in stores, people shopping and buying. I spend a lot of time in malls and the majority of them are dead or dying.

[00:00:34.070]
This mall has a good location, sure, but good location doesn't guarantee a good mall. If you look behind me, you'll see that's an ice skating rink and that rink is filled with people skating for fun, but also ice skating lessons. There's a children's museum here and fun activities scattered throughout the mall, all things that make it an entertaining place to be. I don't think retail has quite figured out what it wants to be in the 21st century yet.

[00:01:01.790]
But I do know it's about experiences. This mall is creating experiences and therefore it's creating traffic. In fact, all businesses today are about experiences, customers for every type of business in to B or B to C just to have so many choices. And when prices are relatively stable across the board and quality is quite high across the board, then the only differentiator is experience. I'm not talking about service services expected. I'm talking about experiences, things that make life more interesting, more fun or more valuable.

[00:01:38.240]
As I talk to you now, I'm watching grandparents walking into the mall with small children. This is a place to go. How can you make your business a place to go and experience to have in ways that are relevant to your business, the staff in the hills? Because I've been working and are so passionate about jewelry at the store, it's fun. They study and listen to fun podcasts and read the latest blogs about jewelry. They're all taking classes or otherwise studying and then they're sharing those stories and all that enthusiasm with their customers.

[00:02:11.360]
That's an experience I didn't see a coffeemaker or offers of wine in the store. The experience they're offering is the richest jewelry buying and selling experience possible. The experience this mall is offering is the experience of a place to go and things to do, which include shopping. So that's what I wanted to share with you today. What relevant, meaningful experiences are you offering? Do you understand your own brand enough to offer experiences that are consistent with expanding your brand?

[00:02:43.850]
Because that's what it takes to be successful today. And when you're creating those experiences, you won't just be making more money. You'll also be having more fun.

Sometimes I listen to parents complain bitterly about things their toddlers – or teenagers – are doing; things which are totally age-appropriate. If you’re like me, you think to yourself, “as long as you're a parent, you would have a better time if you learned about the developmental stages of children.”

I had a friend who once decided to ride his bike from Albuquerque to Santa Fe – a 65-mile trip. Half way through his journey – and in the middle of nowhere – his bike broke down and he didn’t know how to fix it. If you’re just riding your bike around the neighborhood, you can get away with not knowing any repair skills. But if you’re going to start making long treks in sparsely populated areas, you need to learn how to fix your bike and own the proper tools.

There are probably many things you wouldn’t do without learning a lot about them and practicing first: true wilderness camping without survival skills, throwing a huge self-cooked dinner party without cooking skills, sailing a boat in the ocean without navigational and boating skills.

Are you running a small business without small business success skills? If you are, it’s going to cost you.

As a small business – or even a micro-business – owner, you must do all the things the CEO of any company does; decide what to sell and how to sell it, whether and when to hire help, manage customer service, operations, and finances, make decisions. Even if you don’t have formal investors, you are managing a huge investment – your own. Your investment is the time you spend, the money you put in, and the profits you roll back in. You are responsible for all the same things as any CEO, but without the qualified support staff to fill in the gaps in your knowledge.

I was the CEO/President of several corporations over the past 30 years, from a $2million/year marketing agency to a $100million+ jewelry company and a $600million+ apparel company, and now I own a multi-brand consulting agency. The skills I needed between the $2 million level and the $600+million level were remarkably similar. I didn’t need to “be” an accountant, but I had to know how to discuss finances intelligently with my accountants. I didn’t need to “be” a production manager, but I needed to understand what my production managers were doing and how to help them be more successful. I didn’t need to “be” the computer network manager, but I needed to be competent enough to weigh the suggestions my network managers made and make good decisions.

When I first took over the apparel company, I realized that my accounting skills were lacking to do the analysis at that level. Did I go back to school to become an accountant? Absolutely not. But I did go take a class called “Financial Management for Non-Financial Managers” offered at a local community college. That, plus a lot of attention and practice, turned me into a strong financial manager capable of not driving my accounting staff crazy, and more importantly, of being the CEO my company deserved. Every year of my career I have added more business skills to my portfolio, and I continue to do so today. You must do this too.

You probably already know how to make and/or acquire the products and services you sell. This is the starting point for most entrepreneurs. But there are several business skills you must cultivate in order to ensure the survival and profitability of your company. These small business success skills include:

• Basic understanding of financials and financial management. You don’t need to become an accountant (in fact, paying a good accountant is one of the most important things any small business owner can do). But you must understand your role in financial matters, how to work with your accountant, and how to steer your company in the right direction.
• How to not just make a strategic business plan, but use it for ongoing business development and improvement.
• How to express your business strategy as a Brand, and how to imbue your whole organization – from product idea to post-sales satisfaction – with Brand elements that stick with customers and keep them coming back for more.
• How to hire, train, discipline, fire, and motivate employees. Even if you have only one employee, you need these skills. Otherwise, you risk paying someone to work for you without getting the full value of that pay.
• How to set up the necessary business systems to manage your customers, sales, inventory, marketing, operations, and accounting. By systems I don’t necessarily mean expensive computer software – the solutions can be anything from KanBan cards to computers. But you need to know which systems you need and how to set them up.
• How to manage your inventory to ensure high service levels, solid margins, happy customers, and no excess taxes. Inventory is about way more than just buying goods and making them. You must understand the role inventory plays in your company, and how to manage that role carefully.
• How to create and manage a sales and marketing plan.
• How to set up sales and customer service programs that drive volume and profits, whether you’re selling to business clients, through retail stores, or directly to end consumers (or any combination thereof).
• How to not only create and sell products, but manage product and product line profitability.
• How to prospect for new customers –from finding new potential sources for sales to keeping them interested, and learning how long it takes to convert a prospect to a loyal customer.
• How to decide which operations to keep in-house, which to outsource, and how to manage both types.

Being a business owner is a big task, and I’m not going to pretend that list is a quick or easy thing to master. But if you start learning these skills right away and keep picking them off one-by-one, you’ll become a better CEO from the moment you start . . . and the time is going to go by either way.

This is a link to a chart of these skills. It is structured as a pledge; a pledge to yourself to pursue and cultivate the skills you need to succeed. I encourage you to print it out, post it in a highly (and daily) visible spot, and check each one off as you tackle it. And here’s to you, on the road to becoming a highly competent – and vastly more satisfied – CEO.

I’m not a consumer jewelry blogger, but this is something I wish every consumer jewelry buyer would know. It’s about how (great it is) to buy designer jewelry.

When you buy designer jewelry, your jewelry has a back story

Nearly every piece of jewelry I own came from a designer. As I write this blog, I am wearing raw diamond floret earrings and a raw diamond tennis bracelet from Todd Reed, a ring from Bree Richey on my left hand, a ring from Elizabeth Garvin and another from Jennifer Dawes on my right hand. I have lovely little button earrings from Robin and Remy Rotenier. I nearly always wear a bracelet from Walt Adler and another from a craftsman in Mexico whose name I have long forgotten but whose face I will always remember. My favorite brooch is a mokume-gane gem from Jim Binnion and Steve Midgett (yep! both of them).  Someday I will own a heart pendant from Rhyme & Reason. Something from Mark Schneider’s color collection. A mother's cuff from Erica Courtney. A Padparadscha anything from Omi Prive. Anything from Suzy Landa (preferably green or purple), hoop earrings from Pamela Froman, something nouveau vintage from Just Jules, Diana Widman’s Night Sky pendant, and a piece from ZAIKEN’s Throwing Stones collection.  (I have not received compensation from any of these designers for mention in this blog).

What don’t I own? A single white diamond ring. No diamond studs. I don’t own any Cartier or Tiffanys. I don't buy jewelry for the sparkle, the status, the vault value, or even the fashion. I love the sculptural quality of jewelry, the gemstones (all of them), the art. In this way, I am representative of the type of women who buy designer jewelry – or women who would buy designer jewelry if they knew what was available to them. There are many of us.

'Art' and 'Decorations' are Different Buying Experiences

Buying designer jewelry is not, should not be, like buying generic jewelry. What is generic jewelry? Any piece of fine jewelry that was designed for mass appeal. Does saying it’s generic mean it’s not beautiful? Not at all. I can see the beauty in a perfectly manicured lawn, even if it is similar to the other perfectly manicured lawns down the same stretch of manicured road. I just don’t want that for my own yard. My yard was designed, layer upon delicious layer, to make a statement (entirely different blog here – but you get my point). Does this make me a better customer or a more desirable customer for jewelry? Not at all. But it does make me - and women like me - a different kind of customer, and one that is not currently very well served.

Buying designer jewelry is about buying art you get to wear. What do you do when you buy art? You look for something that speaks to you. You look for something that pulls a feeling out of you that you weren’t feeling before you looked at it. You look for art that you know you’ll be happy to sit and stare at for hours and years on end. You don’t buy art to match the paint and furniture in the room – for the right piece of art you design the room around it. Good art grows old with you.

Great art doesn’t have to be expensive. Would I be giddy with excitement to own an original Rothco? Absolutely. But there is a painting in my living room painted by an artist named James R Gros. He is not famous and the painting cost me less than $200. But it’s one of the most expressive pieces I own. I never get tired of studying it, and everyone who visits our home at some point wants to talk about it.

Too many people do not know the joy of seeking and acquiring art – which is not a money thing, it’s an awareness thing. You can teach a child to buy meaningful art on her allowance.

So when I look for jewelry, I want it to have artistic merit. I want it to have been conceived of and created as part of a thought process about beauty, and craftsmanship, and precious materials. I want to know that whenever I wear it, I will see it, and when I see it, it will mean something to me.

That’s the first thing I wish every consumer knew about designer jewelry. That it’s buying art. When you take a person by the hand and show them the sheer delight and wonder of buying art, the experience can be transformative. I want consumers to have that experience with designer jewelry.

There's Another Opportunity Beyond Custom

 The other thing I wish consumers knew about buying designer jewelry is the difference between buying custom/bespoke and buying a designer commission. If a consumer has an idea for a piece of jewelry he wants to make, and he primarily needs a pair of hands to help him execute it; or if he wants a design that is very traditional but using some of his own elements, that’s what I refer to as custom or bespoke. There's no criticism in this – it's an essential service and can be a terrific experience. But that’s not the same as buying designer commissioned jewelry.

Just as you wouldn’t go to Klimt, hand him a photograph, and tell him to paint your portrait precisely as seen in the photo, I personally wouldn’t go to a jewelry designer and tell him what to make. A big part of the value of buying jewelry from a designer is the designer’s point of view. It's not that the customer has no input. Most designers who will do individual pieces have a discussion or series of discussions with the client first. They talk about gemstones, which ones the client likes most, and why. They ask about how the client wears jewelry, why they wear it, and how it makes them feel. As a client myself, I have loved those conversations. But once you find a jewelry designer who clearly has beautiful images in his head and the ability to turn those ideas into real objects, much of the joy in wearing the finished piece is turning the designer loose and seeing how that designer transforms your conversations about intangible things into a physical work of art.

Of course, not everyone who calls himself a designer is actually a designer. There is ample room for argument here, but generally someone who is truly a designer will have a clear point of view, a body of work that expresses that point of view, and a recognizable evolution in their thought process over time.

I have this imaginary scene in my head where a consumer walks into ABC Jewelry Store with her grandmother’s rings and says, “I’d like to turn these diamonds and rubies into something I can wear and love.” And the jeweler, who is very talented at the bench, asks “Do you know what you want?” The consumer says, “No, I really don’t, but I appreciate beauty, and I want something that is a bit unusual but which will keep me visually engaged for the next 30 years.”

And the jeweler thinks, “I’m really good at making jewelry – the best – but I don’t have an artistic point of view and what I make is pretty traditional looking. Since this consumer doesn’t want to direct this effort and she wants something different, perhaps I’ll teach her how to buy art!” Then he says to his new customer, “Let’s have some fun. I’m going to introduce you to some different types of designer jewelry – designers who will also do commission work. We’re going to see what you like and learn a bit together. Then, let’s pick someone for you to work with, and let them create a piece of art just for you, something that you will always treasure and be proud of.”

Shoot, I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

Is this experience for everyone? Of course not. But for some, the right guidance from the beginning would turn buying designer jewelry into an obsession for them, something to look forward to once a year, or once every few years.

So these are the things I wish consumers knew. I wish more people were able to have the ultimate experience of buying designer jewelry. Because my new ring designed by Jennifer Dawes just arrived today. I’m utterly conscious that I'm wearing it. It brought tears to my eyes when I opened it. And I know that if more consumers felt like I do right now after acquiring a new piece of jewelry, they’d want fine jewelry more often.

Nobody walks into a Walmart and thinks she is in Target. She may be looking for the same brand of paper towel or hair color, but she knows which mass merchant's store she's in the second those sliding doors glide open. You might think this is about layout and lighting (and it is), but mostly it's about Merchandise Point of View.

If you were blindfolded and led into a Yonkers, deep between the clothing racks, once you took off the blindfold you may not know immediately where you were, but you would definitely know that you weren't in Neiman Marcus.  The two department stores have a very different Merchandise Point of View.

Both Radio Shack and Best Buy sell computer cables, but despite certain product similarities, the Merchandise Point of View is decidedly different.

Behind every successful retailer is a clearly defined Merchandise Point of View. Struggling retailers may struggle for many reasons, but nearly all of them have failed to define their Merchandising Point of View.

So what is a Merchandising Point of View?

Your Merchandising Point of View is your declaration of identity to the world of consumers, it is what your store is all about, it screams come in if you like these things and move along if you value those other things because that's just not what we're into here. A Merchandising Point of View both includes and excludes - because you don't need every customer to be successful. You just need the right customers.

The Merchandising Point of View often starts with what the owner of the retail store loves and values, but if it doesn't expand quickly to determine which customers those things matter to and whether or not there are enough of those customers, the  Merchandise Point of View is not sustainable.

Strong merchants (retailers) define their best customers - they know what their customers wear, how their customers spend their time, how their customers spend their money, how they align themselves within society, and what matters to them. Strong retailers know how to keep their customers engaged, and they do this with many elements, including excellent sales staff, desirable environment, promotion and marketing. But the most powerful way to keep customers engaged is to keep bringing them new and interesting products that appeal to them. The best way to do this is through a crystal clear Merchandise Point of View.

So how do you develop a Merchandise Point of View? You ask and answer these questions:

1. Which customers do we want?
2. Which types of products matter to the customers we want?
3. How do I want my customers to feel when they walk into my store?
4. Which adjectives do I want customers to associate with my store?
5. What is the unique story or experience of our store, and how do we express it - through words, colors, lighting, communications, customer relationships, design features . . .

Once you ask and answer those questions, you can select merchandise that not only fits with but also advances your store's unique story. This marriage of merchandise, experience, and physical (or graphical) space is the Merchandise Point of View, and like all marriages, it requires constant nurturing and attention to blossom and to be sustained.

What's your Merchandise Point of View? If you can't answer this question, it's time to get cracking! The profession of retailing changes daily, and you can't afford to get even one step behind.

Several recent studies are practically shouting at the jewelry industry to reevaluate our behavior and prepare for the future. We've relied on Baby Boomers to buy our luxury goods for so long, we've practically forgotten that they would eventually age out of the major acquisition stage of their lives (which, admittedly in the case of the Baby Boomers, was enormous and economy-building).

What are the Studies and What are they Saying?

The first study, by McKinsey & Company (A Multifaceted Future: The Jewelry Industry in 2020), essentially predicted that the jewelry industry would continue to consolidate and would start to mirror the changes in the apparel industry, which means more intense brand focus and a blurring of fine and fashion. Stores with a single strong brand identity and focus will be the clear winners. This points to younger buyers, who are more into the experience of a specific brand than the experience of encountering many high-end brands in one location. The department store jewelry experience will wane and the Todd Reed Studio store in Boulder, the Alexis Bittar Studio  stores in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, or the Greenlake Jewelry Works experience in Seattle will rise.

The second study, by Unity Marketing and summarized in this article on Rapaport's Diamonds.net, says that we are at at tipping point in branding and marketing. The study asserts that older consumers - long depended upon for their brand-buying habits - have reduced their spending, and that luxury marketers need to adjust their marketing, branding, and channel behaviors to appeal to the younger buyers taking their place.

So what does this mean? Several things.

1. Respect the new consumer. Some things never change. Just as the parents of Baby Boomers were mystified by their children and found them to be disrespectful, responsibility-averse, and entitled, the Baby Boomers are laying the same labels on the next generations. If you're stuck in this rut, dig on out, because the labels are more a product of Baby Boomer age than of younger generation reality.

2. Learn about the new consumer.

1. 1. Millenials are more informed than any prior consumer generation, which means they have done their research before they come to the sale, and they know a lot - perhaps more than most sales people - when they arrive.
   2. They care less about social conventions than any prior generation - which means that they don't buy for status. If they want something, it's to satisfy themselves only, which means everything they buy is far more personal. "But wait!" you say. "They run everything by their friends first. Isn't that status seeking?"  Actually, it's not. It's collaboration. This is the most collaborative generation we've ever met, and their opinions matter to one another. They share, borrow, rent, and trade as a way to spread the enjoyment and the wealth.
   3. They pride themselves on doing more with less. They search for the right deal, the right product, the right timing, the right experience. This is true in their jobs and it's true in their purchasing behavior. This generation has been labeled entitled, but that's not accurate. They just don't settle.
   4. They value experiences. This is the first generation that will blow an entire paycheck on a meal and then live on Ramen for the rest of the month. It's not about the food, it's about the experience, and they don't want to wait until they are retired to have experiences.
   5. This generation isn't waiting for luxuries. But their acquisition of luxuries isn't systematic, and it doesn't follow the same life patterns (school, marriage, children, luxury acquisition) as their parents did. If they want something now, they find a way to acquire it now. But see the four points above regarding what motivates them and how they buy it.
   6. This one should go without saying, but remember that this generation doesn't perceive any difference between internet marketing and billboards - it's all communications to them. The time to perceive a difference between traditional marketing and new/internet marketing is over.  Similarly, whether a store is online or brick-and-mortar, it's all shopping to them. Sales and marketing channels are forever changed, and you need to be out in front of that.

Now What?

I have a few ideas for you, but first, I want you to go back to the previous section of this article, and read each bullet again. After each bullet, ask yourself, "how does my product offering, my brand, my store look to the new consumer in light of this piece of information?" Try to see it through the new consumer's eyes, because that young person is your next patron.

Now let's start with the basics.

Mobile computing. If your store/brand/offering isn't readily available to the new consumer on her mobile device, there's a good chance she won't see you at all. This next generation of shoppers does most of her computing right on her phone or tablet. If your website doesn't automatically reformat itself to be mobile friendly on any device, this new consumer will quickly dismiss you as out-of-touch and a waste of time.

Your Brand Experience. The new consumer mingles entertainment with shopping. Entertainment can be a variety of things, from educational and informative to interactive. Your store, your website, your social media presence, your radio ads, your magazine ads - all of these methods of communication must present a single, clear brand message that engages the new consumer's interest and emotions.

Unfortunately, there is no pat answer to how to do this. In fact, pat is the antithesis of the new consumer. To define your brand experience, you must dig deep into your identity, purpose, and meaning as a brand. Figure out what it is about you that consumers identify with - and what you want them to identify with. You won't appeal to all consumers, and that's the point. You don't need all the consumers - you just need the right consumers. Figure out who they are, and how to communicate with them, and you will discover which brand experience is resonant. This work can only be done by you. It can be guided by someone who knows how to do such work, but you are essential to it - it can't be provided to you.

Your Sales Organization. The new consumer is coming to the sales cycle late. What does this mean? It means that in the past we were able to guide the consumer through the sales cycle but those days are gone.. Before the internet and the uber-informed new consumer, most pre-purchase research was done in the store, aided by a skilled salesperson who was the expert in the product area. Today, consumers conduct significant research online prior to entering a store. They have already availed themselves of product reviews, user comments, technical reviews, design critiques, and alternative purchase options before they approach your sales organization.

At one time, a salesperson asking the question "How may I help you?" was making a an offer of help that was likely needed. Today those words are simply an annoying form of hello.  The only way to impress the new consumer with your sales organization is to be even more informed than them - and that requires work, and energy, and curiosity.

Your sales organization must have insight, knowledge, and stories that the consumer can't find anywhere else. The help the new consumer wants is not small talk and it's not a pitch - it's genuine assistance, even when that means getting out of their way. To the extent your sales staff is a contiguous, meaningful, seamless part of the overall brand experience, the new consumer will accept and welcome their assistance.

Retail is Evolving

A new retail experience is coming, one that combines the best of ecommerce with the best of bricks-and-mortar. It's the next logical thing. Ecommerce has taught mighty retailers like Amazon more about their customers than any other retailer has ever known about its customers before, and this information has been used brilliantly to tailor offerings, engage visitors, and close sales. We are rapidly approaching a time when consumers don't know retail without ecommerce as one of the options, and along the way consumer expectations of both are going to both evolve and blend.

If you're not heavily engaged in—invested in—ecommerce, you won't be part of witnessing first-hand what it means to serve customers in that way, and you won't have the necessary insights to take your business to the next level . . . whatever that may be. So be sure to include ecommerce as part of your business model now, doing your best to offer your products and services digitally and learning everything you can.

Keep Your Business Fresh

It's always a brand new world, whether we are talking about generational shifts in consumer behaviors, or technology change, or just next season's colors. The stakes may seem particularly high to you right now, as you take steps to ensure your business is not left behind, but in fact, the stakes have always been high. Static businesses do not thrive, and they never have.

The recent studies about changing consumer behavior are a boon to us, because they force us to stop and think about the business we need to be to stay relevant and profitable. Embrace the change! There's more where that came from.

Why Character Matters in Small Business

I love going through my daughter's mail. Oh, I wouldn't go through it without her! But her mail still comes to my house (that's another story - she has had her own place for ages), and it's frequently filled with tiny boxes and envelopes from all over the world. Like so many people her age, she uses the internet as her shopping mall, and she finds interesting and eclectic items from wherever on the globe they are sold. Her options are endless and exciting.

It's not new news that this is a troubling development for traditional retailers. Consumers have never had so many, nor such interesting, options. Furthermore, consumers want something from their purchasing experience - something that historically played a smaller role in consumer demand. The new consumer expects the purchasing experience to also deliver meaning, experience, and relationships - or some combination of those three.

Many things must be done to attract and keep the new consumer - from merchandising strategy to experience to branding and marketing. But at the heart of all the changes (fun changes by the way) is your brand. At the heart of your brand is your character.

The dictionary defines character as "the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual." Likewise, a business must have distinct mental and moral qualities, qualities that make it matter to certain customers. Your qualities won't matter to all the customers, and they don't have to. You don't need all the customers to be successful, you just need the right customers.

If you know precisely who you are, why your business matters to you, and why that should matter to your customers, you have the beginnings of a brand. If you take that beginning further and stay true to your core purpose, expressing your values as part of your unique and meaningful offering, your brand will begin to grow. When you ask and answer every question through the lens of your values - from how you work with your vendors to what merchandise to offer to the messages in your marketing materials to how you treat your customers - your brand will be come powerful. And that, in a nutshell, is character.

The most powerful thing a small business owner can do is be an effective leader, and ensure his entire organization conveys a strong message of character and integrity to his business community. This core strength will benefit your business in every possible way.