The Credibility Branding Blog

Blogging, List Building and Brand Building

If you are an entrepreneur or even if you are a larger company, having a good qualified opt-in list is increasingly becoming a foundational marketing program. For those focused more on online sales it is your lifeblood. There are a lot of people out there discussing how to build a list, here are a few things I have learned using some of the obvious and also incorporating more strategies using my credibility branding model.

Blogging:

Blogging is a great way to establish your brand by using content to establish expertise and personality. I call it a networking and branding building platform. Your web site is a brochure, your blog is you own personal magazine that can illustrate your point and show what you know.  The networking part is leveraging the power of your voice and the audience you are building to improve your relationship with influencers who by association can improve your brand. Here are a few hints to do that:

• Re-post articles of those you want endorsements from or influencers you would like to form relationships with and tell them you reposted one of their works
• Do a review of these same people content and blogs and ;et them know you did so
• Ask readers to join your email list / blogger list

Blogging is a great way to drive a new audience to your newsletter list, if they like your blog they want more.

Squeeze pages and Bonus Gifts:

Squeeze pages are designed to build your list; you give away free stuff on the squeeze page in exchange for an email address. I recently created one for my credibility branding audit (you can check out here). You can use is as a broader strategy; start with a squeeze page to build a qualified list for a specific product. Then offer a phased approach of phased products to that audience.

Try out social networking sites

There are a number of social networking site that will drive traffic and if done right can drive the right traffic to create new subscribers, here are a couple:

• List Bandit - List building networks; one I recently cam across is List Bandit. It is a group of like mined individuals building lists on top of each other, it is worth signing up and trying it. It is a little confusing to start but you get a series of emails that start to walk you through how it works. Also a hint… at the beginning they offer you a special deal that only comes up at the time of signing up they are right and it is a good deal if you can afford it.
• Stumbleupon is a downloadable toolbar that embeds into your browser and gives you the      chance to surf through thousands of excellent pages that have been stumbled upon by other web-users. You can drive traffic by telling the right audience about something that is relevant to them (maybe your blog).
• Del.icio.us is a place to store your bookmarks in one place, bookmark things for yourself and friends and check out what other people are bookmarking. The key is to drive people to your bookmarks      and also get onto other peoples lists. This is another one of those credibility branding things, if you can get on an influencers list it drives traffic and builds your credibility by association.
• Twitter a mini blog based on only 40 characters per post based on the premise “what are you doing” build a following here too.
• Squidoo build a page about your passions create a specific lens of your product here is mine. You      can also start you own groups, I started one that is starting to slowly build.
• MyBlogLog, one of my favorites this is a blogging networking community. Bloggers are      influencers and are ahead of the curve, MyBlogLog allows you to meet and interact with fellow bloggers. A great site where you meat great professional friends that are doing the same thing as you. I have gotten many newsletter subscribers from here and fans and I have become fans of      some pretty awesome people.
• There are a lot more… please leave comments with ones you have found to work and how they work.

Pop Ups

The days of pop ups are waning, however apparently they still work. The key is to have it pop up at the end of their stay as they are clicking away and offer a gift to incent them giving their email.

Bottom line with all of this is to go after the audiences that make sense for your product don’t get an email address just to get an email address. Use these practices to drive a pre-qualified audience to you products. Use them to further establish your credibility and to get those points of credibility across in your messaging. Be careful not to get distracted by these tactics by doing too much of this and not running your business.

Direct Mail Might Just Work Better

While email is the marketing vehicle of choice for many there is still room in your repertoire for direct mail. In fact the following article out of Media Post Media Research Center validated this (see below or click here to go to the source).

Email has become an art form… getting the right subject line will entice readers to open it, having the right copy in the email body that will drive traffic. But email is perceived as a very personal thing, and anything that you send that is remotely considered spam is dangerous to your brand. I think we are becoming too reliant on email, it is cheap and easy which makes it so ubiquitous, but that is also why it is becoming such a coveted place and a tactic we need to be careful with.

The following article really offers another reason to reinvestigate direct mail as a viable option to support you marketing goals.

DM Mail More Likely to be Opened Than Unsolicited Email

A recent survey by International Communications Research, commissioned by Pitney Bowes found that 73 percent of consumers prefer mail for receiving new product announcements or offers from companies they do business with, as compared to 18 percent for e-mail. Mail was also preferred by 70 percent of respondents for receiving unsolicited information on products and services from companies with which they are not currently doing business.

For confidential communications such as bills, bank statements and financial reports, 86 percent of respondents preferred mail as their channel of choice, as compared with 10 percent for e-mail, identical to the response in the 2004 survey, which also showed consumer preference for mail at 86 percent.

Stacy DeWalt, vice president, Vertical Market Development and Marketing, Pitney Bowes Management Services, said "The research... shows that consumers still prefer mail over e-mail... we continue to find that mail is the most effective marketing tool businesses can use when communicating with their customers."

The survey also found that 31 percent of consumers are less likely to discard unopened mail, including new product brochures, catalogs or other advertising materials, while 53.2 percent are likely to discard unsolicited e-mails about new products.

"In an environment crowded with marketing messages, it's important for marketers to utilize the most effective mailstream tools available," said Jeff Marshall, vice president of customer marketing for Pitney Bowes Global Mailstream Solutions. "While mail is the preferred vehicle for reaching consumers, businesses and organizations need to remember that it is critical to target consumers with relevant messages at appropriate times to get a meaningful return-on-investment."

Specific advantages consumers see in mail versus unsolicited e-mail and telephone calls, according to the report, compared with other communications channels, survey respondents found mail to be:

· Less intrusive... doesn't interrupt other activities (45.3 percent)

· More convenient... can be saved and considered at leisure (40.2 percent)

· Less high-pressured... lets you consider your decision (30.2 percent)

· More descriptive... lets you picture the offer (22.7 percent)

· More persuasive... encourages you to respond (12 percent)

What Venture Capital Wants – Credibility Branding and Marketing

I apologize for my absence… I have been working a couple of big projects of late and attending some conferences. I recently attended the OCTANe VC conference in Orange County and thought you might appreciate some for the insights I garnered. I attended several panels for those looking for funding presenting to a panel of VCs looking for hot new investments.

Here were some of the more relevant and general take aways:

• Most companies fail not because they don’t have a great vision but because of lousy execution
• Passion and vision is not enough you must deliver
  • Deliver on the promise
  • Deliver an actual product (and on time)
  • Deliver to the market need
  • Deliver on a specific pain the market is feeling
• There should not be an obvious storm of competition in the market in the near term
  • Early to market wins
  • New ideas not a “me too” product
  • Even if it is the best new widget, if it is in a pool of many similar widgets it is to hard to differentiate (and get funding)
• Must have a demonstrable team
• Customers that have signed up to the concept

Many of the VCs mentioned that they don’t even call the references you provide—they know they will be positive. Instead they go to potential clients (not on your list) and ask their thoughts. So do your due diligence, and do the same; go outside of your normal references and ask potential customers what they think (especially those you know that the VC you are working with might have hooks into). Find out what they might say and address those objections in advance.

I am putting together a series of VC panels at an upcoming conference in Santa Clara. The Flash Memory Summit VC Sessions are occurring August 7^th. If you are in the flash memory space and are looking for funding you can sign up to participate. We are also offering and open invitation to VC looking for companies in that sector to join one of our panels. There are three early morning, afternoon and late afternoon. Just send me an email and your credentials and I will get you on board.

I will be back on Tuesday with a more regular posting schedule. 

IS YOUR LOGO REALLY WORKING ON YOUR WEB SITE? (Special Offer!)

This is for the first 25 respondents only (so hurry up)!

As we all know, making sales on your Web site involves a lot of factors. Ever consider your logo as part of the success (or not) of your Web site?

Our logo expert, Dr. Bill Haig, has done some interesting research on this and has determined that your logo must be credible on your website to be effective. For example, company logos designed with specific company credibility traits will increase the conversion rate 2x to 4x compared to logos which are not credibility based. That could mean increasing sales 2x to 4x.  It is all a matter of trusting the company behind the website. This is the focus of his recent PhD dissertation.

Following up from yesterday's excellent post by Bill, he is offering a no cost logo evaluation for your company to the first 25 people who respond. This is a good opportunity to receive an expert opinion about your logo.

Bill provides a three page evaluation report, including background as to why Credibility Based Logo Design works. He gives examples of credible logos. His objective is to give small business an understanding how logos contribute to the bottom line when they are credible. The flip side, of course, is that a company logo can actually be a distraction when customers cannot trust a company when it does not look credible.

Here is what you do:

1. Send Bill a full description of your company business. Just ramble as if you are describing it to someone who knows nothing about it.

2. Include why your business is unique. What do you do that your competitors do not do.

3. Send your logo.

Bill’s email address for this special no cost logo evaluation is

bill@haigbranding.com

For more about Bill’s proven Credibility Based Logo Design strategy, please read the articles which appear here regularly. His website is www.powerlogos.com and he can be reached by phone at 808-922-4042 Hawaii Time after 9 am.

Logo Design as "Surface" Credibility

By Dr. William L. Haig Chairman, CEO Powerlogos Design Co-author, The Power of Logos: How to Create Effective Company Logos, NY: Wiley, 1997 (fifth printing.)

Two questions often asked are: (1) why is the principle of credibility in communication persuasion important to logo design, and (2) how does graphic design communicate credibility, or more specifically, how does a company logo convey its credibility? Logo design must be credibility based to be effective. Consumers look as logos as a form of visual "surface" credibility in a similar manner as they judge how people look from simple hair or clothing cues.

Credibility Based Logo Design

The underlying theme throughout the work of Powerlogos Design is that source credibility principles in communication persuasion applied to non-verbal graphic design forms to express the company personality, also known as the company's credibility image. Most research in source credibility has been in interpersonal, or people-to-people, communication. The research I pursued is in source credibility in company-to-people communication, with the company as the source.

An early study in source credibility research relative to company to people communication was my MA thesis in 1979, Credibility Compared to Likeability in Marketing Communication: A Study of Company Symbols. The conclusion was that company logos which were perceived as predominately credible would have more persuasion value than company logos which were perceived as only likeable. The thesis was written into a marketing book, The Power of Logos: How to Create Effective Company Logos: NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. My PhD dissertation in 2006 also concluded that credibility based logo design has persuasion value. In fact, my research with credibility based logo design and company websites was very convincing. A company website with a credibility based logo design was up to four times more effective in influencing clickthroughs to a product or service purchase than a company website with a non-credible logo.

What is meant by source credibility or source credibility communication persuasion? In its simplest terms, credibility means trustworthy (sometimes referred also as believability.). People are more inclined to purchase from a company or a salesperson if they believe the company or person is trustworthy and hence honest. Credible sources have attributes of expertise/competency and are believable/ trustworthy. Credible sources are high or low in these attributes, meaning a range of dynamism. For example, a successful speaker would be competent about the subject being discussed, is trustworthy, and have a dynamic delivery. Company personalities are often discussed in terms of people metaphors. Thus a successful company would be competent relative to its core business, trustworthy, and use its logo to communicate these traits as a dynamic non-verbal graphic design message.

When discussing source credibility applied to company logos it should be pointed out that there are four categories of source credibility which Dr. B.J. Fogg of Stanford University first identified in his book, Persuasive Technology.

Four Categories of Source Credibility

Surface credibility is believed from a "simple inspection or first hand experience." We form surface judgements about various things which come into our perception world, such as a person's looks, hair style, clothing, manner of speech, manner of walking and so on. This is the world of non-verbal visual cues, such as expressed in graphic design, to infer that the source is ‘believable/honest’ and ‘competent/expert’. We look at product packaging this way. A computer software package which is dated looking, or looks like someone printed it in their garage, will be skipped over at a computer store in favor of a "professional" looking package design. A website which is poorly or amateurishly designed will also be skipped over as not being from a credible source. It is the same with logo design. And it is the most easily type of credibility a company can control because it is planned, created and implemented by company management on a consistent basis. It is important to note that logos fit into the 'surface credibility' category initially, but can ultimately be part of any categories which follow.

Presumed credibility is believed from "general assumptions in the mind of the perceiver." We form presumed judgements when we interact with a source and presume from stereotypical generalities that the source is credible, or not credible. For example, car salespeople are generally not considered credible, while other stereotypes are generalized as being credible, such as the clergy, or physicians.

Reputed credibility is believed from "third-party endorsements, reports, or referrals." We form reputed judgments on the basis of labels, such as an MD or PhD following one’s name or other endorsements such as awards, referrals and reports on people or things. A link from a respected website to another is another example.

Experienced credibility is believed from "first hand that extends over time." This is considered the most powerful form of credibility. The cornerstone of this form of credibility is consistency over a period of time. When a person is reliable we infer that our dealings with that person can be expected and will be consistent with each encounter and over a period of time. It is the same with companies. We want our experience with McDonalds to be the same each time we go for a quick meal down the street or in another state. McDonalds has Hamburger University and detailed manuals to learn and follow. Other areas of consistency are the strict use of the company logo, and compatible graphics which convey the same credibility based image. For example, a company's logo design and stationery design must convey the same defined credibility traits. This is further explained in my article, Consistency: The Key to Branding.

In summary, company logos which are credibility based will be successful when implemented up to four times greater than logos which are not credibility based. This is because we want to know that the company we are dealing with is competent and can be trusted to work with. Surface credibility allows a company to build its credibility on a consistent basis from managed visual cues expressed through its logo and various marketing communications. This is management controlled branding to achieve Brand Credibility.

The You In Your Brand

There is always an aspect of you in your brand and in your business process. Who you attract to you business as a partner customer or employee is a reflection of you. Look around your business right now. Take look at your employees and customers. What do they tell you about the personality of your brand? Are they empowered, are they needy, are they intelligent are they followers are they entrepreneurial? There is no judgment but there is insight here.

These constituents can tell you more about who and what your company is right now than just about ay other intelligence you can gather. Now do the same investigation of your competitor. Do they have a clientele and employee base that feels like it is more in alignment with your brand than your current constituents? Perhaps it is time to take a closer look at why that might be happening. How is your personal showing up in you company? Where can you be more authentic as a manager, partner and brand?

Is It Time To Go To The Next Level?

What tools are available to take your business to the next level? There are two in this post to explore…

I just finished a branding audit for Carolyn McCormick, and what is so great about this consulting process is hearing directly from customers their experience of my client’s products and services. The customers know better than you ever will how great (or not so great) your product is. The branding audit process get’s you that feedback and additional insights into what your customers are looking for. If you are interested in this process check out the overview of the different services I offer.

 

For example in the case of Carolyn what we discovered was not necessarily surprising but it confirmed many things. Now we are able to use the descriptors her customers offered to explain her services. When a company uses these dialogues to add this customer generated content to their messaging there is a new authenticity and trust tone that is added, and new sense of crediblity. It is a subtle but powerful.

I want to bring up Carolyn specifically because she is offering an upcoming business boot camp in mid June that is not to be missed. If you are an author or a speaker or trainer (or and aspiring one), she will walk you through the step-by-step process she has spent the last 20-years developing working for the biggest names in the industry. She worked with Tony Robbins for 8 years and has also worked on the inside with Mark Victor Hansen, Bob Procter and John Gray among many other luminaries. She has been there and done it, and is now passing along this insider knowledge to the rest of us… trust me, I will be there!

Carolyn is the “Tiffanies” of the coaching world. She is a business and life strategist who works with those that are truly committed to taking their businesses to the next level of influence, relevance and revenues. There really is no one on the planet that has her depth and breadth of expertise creating programs and business models for the greatest minds in speaking and training.

So… the other thing that happens when I do these branding audits (with the really good companies) is I am hooked and become a loyal customer in the process.

Two things to do today… consider attending Carolyn’s Business Boot Camp, and pursuing a brand audit. PS... If you mentioned I sent you you might get a price break!

Ok that was my commercial for the month <grin>.

Does Your Product Rotate?

I love finding the marketing meaning in something as simple as; sales changes if deserts rotate or not. Nathan Detroit bet on the type of deserts that where eaten in the musical Guys and Dolls. This particular Nathan is Nathan Dintenfass of The Venture Geek Blog who wrote about this in his March post. There is a fascination with deserts in just about all cultures… what can you add to your product and service that is the sweetener, the desert, to close the deal?

I think what this post also speaks to (beyond focusing on the details as Nathan lays out) is; what is the marketing opportunity. Where in your business is the “non-rotating desert” and how can you rotate it so more is visible to more of your customers? How can you display your products and services in the most appealing way (i.e. benefit statements; how you can change their lives) directed to the most number of relevant customers.

Thanks Nathan for getting us to consider things more carefully with this elegant analogy.

The Rotating Dessert Issue

March 31st, 2007 by Nathan Dintenfass - The Venture Geek Blog

I enjoy listening to This American Life. I don’t often get to it on a Saturday afternoon (when it’s on my local public radio station), but today I happened to catch it. It was all about the people who come in and out of a diner called The Golden Apple in Chicago over a 24-hour period. But, that’s not what this post is about.

No, this post is about rotating desserts. You see, on the day the This American Life crew was in the Golden Apple the dessert case that would normally be spinning desserts around and around was broken. You know, the kind of thing that looks like this:

So, yeah, it was broken — the desserts weren’t spinning. When the desserts weren’t spinning the Golden Apple sold 50% fewer desserts. Think about that for a moment. Take stationary desserts and start them rotating slowly and double your sales.

Why do I care about desserts, rotating or otherwise?

Because this is such a great lesson in why details matter. They matter in retail environments, and they matter in software — and from now on I think I will always think of that as “The Rotating Dessert Issue”. When I used to build custom web applications for a living we were constantly faced with clients looking at the “buy vs. build” decision. One of our strongest pitches was that off-the-shelf systems may get most of it right, but it’s the details that really end up mattering. Now, of course we had a vested interest in taking that stance, and there are plenty of good arguments against building custom software in many situations, but it doesn’t change the fact that details matter.

Click here to go to the source of this post.

G Cred, Social Media and Credibility Branding

John Follis a prolific advertising entrepreneur wrote a great article on G Cred (Google credibility) in his Art & Commerce column in Adweek (and quoted me no less).

This story is about Google as an increasingly important point of credibility.

The path to being included in the article is also part of the social media world and my credibility branding model. I found John’s blog The Follis Report through the great blogging social networking site MyBlogLog. I read his article which I re-posted on the Credibility Branding Blog in March, then let John know about it. He contacted me and we had several discussions about his G Cred theory. I offered a quote for an article he was writing and he was eventually able to use it here.

See, this stuff works J

Here is the article from Adweek; John offers an important marketing consideration…

Art & Commerce: Do We Have G Cred?
May 21, 2007
By John Follis

In this hype-happy, what-to-believe world, it comes down to a very basic, fundamental thing: credibility. How does one get it? How does one convincingly communicate it? And is there a Good Housekeeping Seal of the 21st century?

"Street cred" has been one recent barometric buzzword. Defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as "acceptability or popularity, especially among young people in urban areas," the legitimacy of street cred should not be minimized. As discussed in Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, the urban environment of street cred has been the birthplace of more than a few trends that have found their way into the mid-American mainstream. As true as that is, however, in today's high-speed cyberspace, street cred is … well … so 2005. There's a new cred in town, and it's called "G cred."

If you haven't guessed, the "G" is for Google. And while the term G cred may be new to you, it's been in the Urban Dictionary for over a year.

G cred (n.): Google credibility. What someone sees when they Google your name, business, product, organization or whatever. It's an increasingly important measure of legitimacy and how seriously someone will take you.

More than the cred of the day, G cred is the cred of the next decade. In her new book, The Credibility Factor, market communications strategist Jennifer McLean offers support for that claim: "While there are multiple forms of credibility found within a company or product, Google is playing an increasingly important role in the perception puzzle. The bottom line is: Credibility fosters trust, and Google is here to stay as a measure of that credibility."

As Google and the Web continue to mature, online visibility will equate to credibility on every level. It does now, through blogs and a myriad of social media sites that have become a respected, easily accessible and exponentially expanding source of cred. In short, word of mouth on steroids. What's important to realize in this Web 2.0 world is that G cred doesn't just apply to every business, product and organization. It also applies to every professional. And that's not a new thought. Respected marketing gurus like Tom Peters and Seth Godin have been preaching the value of building one's "personal brand" for years. Godin's Purple Cow champions the value of standing out and "being remarkable." Similarly, in The Brand You, Peters explains how career survival is not about blending in but about standing out:

"Regardless of age, position or the business we happen to be in, we need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You."

If that was true when Peters wrote it back in 1997, just imagine how true it is today. And that means visibility online. If you do a Google search on yourself and little comes up, or it's dated, well that's not good. If you happen to be someone in the marketing communications business and that happens, you'd better hope it's not your clients who are doing the searching.

As Google continues to rattle the cages of traditional media ("Google Gooses Big Media," Time, March 16), traditional agency execs had better start focusing more attention on the online model, regardless of their success at immediately monetizing it. In less than a decade, Google has gone from $0 to $3.1 billion in after-tax profits. With that, the new reality is that "nontraditional advertising" ain't so nontraditional anymore. Regardless of who wins this latest Clash of the Media Titans, I would venture to say that no media company, or ad agency, should expect to win long term if they don't fully understand and embrace the new rules of the game.

As much as this is sounding a lot like an ad for Google, it's not meant to be. I have no business or personal ties to Google, no direct or indirect company connections and, unfortunately, no Google stock. My point is simply that, as I hear a growing number of CEOs and business owners refer to advertising as "the A word," I've come to realize that it's no longer enough for agency execs to merely know about the curve. We'd best be ahead of it.

Got G cred?

Click here to read it from the source.

Leveraging Social Media for Competitive Research

This is great advice from Google Organic Blog in general also offering good specific tactics to perform competitive research. Building credibility means knowing what the competition is doing (and noticing what is working for them and what isn’t). The point of his article is research which is an underused tactic. Read and implement! (This is an excerpt of the full blog.)

Know thy market

Google Organic Blog

Sit back and ask yourself the following question;

How well do I know my market?

Hmmm, this is something that most will say they know very well, but do you really know it?

There was a time when I though I knew my market well. However after a few months I quickly realized that I was dead wrong.

Do you really know who your competitors are?

I have the luxury of reviewing current and future competitors because I also maintain a fairly good sized affiliate program. So knowing that I have the ability to review these sites regularly, I also have an advantage because I can do some competitive research on them.

Researching competition is VITAL. You have to know what they are doing, take what they are doing and see if it is working for them. If it is working for them, is it something that you are willing to take a risk on? If not, is there anything they are NOT doing that you could be to counter that? (*cough GET SOCIAL)

How can you quickly know what they are targeting?

Watch this and this for starters.

Keyword research

Ok, this is something that most already do, but how well you do it might need tweaking. Going after big money keywords is a great thing if you have a strong enough site with the right copy, but lets face it, not all sites were created equally and only THREE websites really matter organically, so if you place a huge emphasis on the best paying organic keyword and are not on page one, forget about it for a while and start looking for other keywords, like long tails.

Any natural web site is going to rank somewhere for something, knowing where you rank is important not only for the “Viagra” of your niche, but those long tail searches can be just as helpful. Not to mention that you should know what your competitors are targeting as well, they probably have some keywords that you never even thought of.

End of Excerpt

Click here for the rest of the post… it goes into some great content about the importance of web statistics