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[Joyce Penner Company: Life Force International Contribution Level: 8]

You hear so much about building relationships BUT ....

Check out www.wordpot.com

Type in your name. What are the results? How many people are looking for you?

Now type in the name of your company. What are the results? How many people each day are looking at your company and more specifically what are they searching for?

Wouldn't it make more sense to target the number of people who are already looking for YOUR company versus spending the bulk of your time building relationships with people who may never have an ounce of interest in your company?

Does that boil down to using social media and You Inc. versus ppc or targeted company keyword (as per results above) articles/videos/blog posts and laser in on your company?

What say you?

Have a good one,
Joyce

[Sandi Lovrecic Company: Global Information Network Contribution Level: 2]

Yes, you can get a lot of leads by promoting a company. The questions is for How Long it will last?
To achieve desired monthly permanent residual income without ever working again after 2-5 years you will have to build a long term relationships with a proven system or your business will come back to zero.

[Richard Bravo Company: Life Force International Contribution Level: 9]

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Happy Monday Millionaire!
Here's my take...

1. Decide on the branding strategy you want to create.
Choose a Name Brand or Your Name Brand.

example: Eagle Marketing Inc. or Joyce Penner Inc.

2. In either case, dedicate your marketing efforts to becoming a market leader in your niche.


So what does that look like?
To be a market leader is to simply be the "brand" or "personally branded" person who has used the tools, i.e. social media, etc. to properly position themselves as an authority and has created not only a customer base, but a "fan base."

Notice I didn't say anything about being an expert or guru, but an authority.
This is a term often used when discussing Google marketing; how to engineer your internet presence to be considered an authority site in the eyes of the Big G. The same applies here.

The authority in the market is the entity people turn to, follow, engage with and respond to.
The authority is a trusted source of value.

Also, it doesn't mean you have to be the "largest" brand in the market.
You could put a huge name brand in the arena against a smaller brand and I would venture to guess that the smaller brand could run a more successful and more profitable campaign IF the smaller brand had a closer relationship with their fan base.

You often hear "the money is in the list." Not so...
If that were true spammers would all be billionaires.
Quality is paramount and supersedes quantity nearly 100% of the time.
➔ ➔ ➔ "The money is in the relationship with the list."

I think a lot of people today are putting the You Inc concept in too small of a box.
It's a much more liberal strategy than just "this is me, I am the brand."

You Inc applies to any business or personality that is wanting to become a market leader in their chosen niche. The primary difference with the You Inc model is the dedicated effort to build a close relationship with your target market. Doing so creates an air of celebrity, thus furthering the "You Inc" perception of a personal brand.

Establishing that position, maintaining it and expanding it's reach and effectiveness in the marketplace needs to be carefully engineered and nurtured through the branding process.
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[Cheryl James Company: Talk Fusion Global Contribution Level: 3]

Richard,
I think what you are saying is that in order to benefit as a You, Inc., we need to be everywhere and touch everyone consistently with the value that is uniquely ours.... does that sound about right?

Pepsi, Google, and Home Depot really don't give a Sh*^ about their customers. I know this is part of what is changing and is also what allows us to differentiate ourselves today.

But getting back to the main question...
The only way to target those that are interested in your company is to throw some moolah at the keywords, or create the interest (videos, articles, etc.) Buying interest (customers) is exactly what history (Pepsi, Google and Home Depot) has taught us.

Your philosophy maintains that we should instead be everything to everyone, everywhere and that in turn will create an interest in our company. Is this even slightly realistic for most people???
I think a blended approach is best

[Kenny Perkins Company: Prepaid Legal Services, Inc. Contribution Level: 2]

Kudos to Richard Bravo. I see now why you are an Instructor on this site. I couldn't have said it any better than that. Building relationships with your list is critical. If you don't build trust with your list you can forget the rest!

[Richard Bravo Company: Life Force International Contribution Level: 9]

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Not at all Cheryl...

I understand why you would make this observation. And I'll address it in a second...

Pepsi, Google, and Home Depot really don't give a Sh*^ about their customers.

But...

Your philosophy maintains that we should instead be everything to everyone, everywhere and that in turn will create an interest in our company. Is this even slightly realistic for most people???

That's not what I'm saying at all.


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My philosophy is actually much more focused and intimate. Which is why it is effective.
You can't be all things to all people. I think we've all heard that right?

What I'm saying is that we focus on a tightly grouped niche and develop a fan base as opposed to just customers or "business builders" like the companies you mentioned.

While they focus purely on ROI, my approach takes the quality of the relationship and response of your audience into consideration as part of the ROI equation.

Remember I said quality is more important than quantity...
So no, you wouldn't try to be everything to everyone.

In order to be a leader in a niche you can't focus on everyone. You have to target a specific group of people and dedicate yourself to understanding them. What do they do in their free time? What do they dream about? What is the utmost need in their life? What is that burning thing that they most desperately want to accomplish or find a solution to?

You can't "get to know" a massive market at this level, which is why it feels like those companies don't give a s#!t. They can't. They have to work with the minimal data they have which is... We made this. Did people buy it? Let's make more.

But even then, the "minimal" data they have, dwarfs the average home business You Inc. entrepreneurs' understanding of their chosen market by comparison. And there are hugely valuable lessons you can glean from these behemoth brands. People do wear CocaCola and Pepsi clothing and accessories and put stickers on their cars. People do choose one over the other in most cases. I know I often prefer Lowes to Home Depot and I like Coke more than Pepsi. I recognize their individual brands instantly. And in fact I'm able to recognize their marketing style in most cases and know when it's a Coke commercial or a Pepsi commercial before the logo ever hits the screen because of the style, image and brand message they have cultivated.

Why they seem cold is simply because of the scale of their brand. Whether you drink Coke or not is irrelevant to their brand awareness and overall sales at this point. But it wasn't always that way. Everyone of those companies started out as small main street brands.

In contrast, what I'm talking about is going back to the "main street" mentality. The small town service and customer knowledge that you only find in smaller establishments today and pulling an intimate group of people together into your circle and serving them on a level no large corporation can do.

But don't get me wrong. Intimate does not mean a few hundred. You can serve thousands of people at this level. The big corporations are selling to millions.
Creating FANS not just customers.

In fact Apple is an awesome example of this. In fact Dean I believe posted an article mention recently about the Mac cult. That's what I'm talking about. And Apple is a huge corporation and they do give a s#!t about their customers.... or at least they have mastered the art of creating that perception in the market place. (key point)



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As for throwing moolah at it, that's not really the case either.
Unlike any other time in history the market data is there in plain sight, freely available to us all.
You just have to know how to use the tools.

There's no reason anyone needs to dump a bunch of money on PPC for instance, to test a market. In fact I argue that you shouldn't even start a PPC campaign until you've done some "free" research first. That free research is going to tell you whether there's a market or not in the first place.

Your PPC testing (or any paid media) is more about copy and the effectiveness of your offer than anything else. You shouldn't even pull the trigger till some preliminary market research has been done to determine if you should throw moolah at it or not.

I think if you ask around to marketers using paid media as a preliminary source of traffic that you'll find they NEVER just throw money at a campaign and they ALWAYS know with some certainty that the campaign should be profitable before they ever activate the campaign.

At least that's how I do it and others I personally know.

If you apply what I'm talking about it expands the reach of your market research because you are in fact talking with your market. You accomplish that again by pulling them in tight and creating community.

Does that make more sense?

And as I mentioned, you can do that with your name or a name brand.
Both are just as effective when you use these principles.
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[Peter Fuller Company: AdzZoo Contribution Level: 3]

Does that boil down to using social media and You Inc. versus ppc or targeted company keyword (as per results above) articles/videos/blog posts and laser in on your company?

What say you? Joyce

Hello Joyce

I say do both.

Build your brand through social media so that when you target those who are looking for your company in the search engines they will find social proof you are worth talking with.

[Mike Dillard Company: Magnetic Sponsoring Contribution Level: 5]

Richard, you are spot on... Thank you for answering this for me

Mike

[Ilka Flood Company: Isagenix Corporation Contribution Level: 4]

Whoa, ... a lot of food for thought.

I have done the PPC campaigns for my company before and yes, it worked as far as making a quick sale or getting a team member.

BUT ... knowing what I know now I would go for building that all-important relationship any day.

"The value of a relationship build and nurtured over a lifetime is worth much more than a quick sale."

I illustrated that point in my post "Quick Sale or Lifelong Customer Which Would You Choose?"

http://www.betternetworker.com/videos/v ... you-choose

While this post talks more about building relationships using Social Media, I believe the same can be applied to PPC advertising. You don't know those people from Adam and vice versa.

Wouldn't it be of more benefit to you to build relationships FIRST?

Anyway, that's just my take on the subject

[Cheryl James Company: Talk Fusion Global Contribution Level: 3]

Richard, you surely are a wealth of knowledge and I can tell you are passionate about that which you speak.
I am 100% with you on everything that you just said....

But that doesn't address the original question... How does one market Oompa Lime Berry Effervescent Juice (the company)?

So then the argument comes back to (what I think you are getting at here) the company doesn't matter.(?)

Wouldn't it make more sense to target the number of people who are already looking for YOUR company versus spending the bulk of your time building relationships with people who may never have an ounce of interest in your company?

Does that boil down to using social media and You Inc. versus ppc or targeted company keyword (as per results above) articles/videos/blog posts and laser in on your company?