brand Archives | Cindy Ratzlaff

4 Free Tools To Turn Quotes into Content for Social Media

By Cindy Ratzlaff April 8, 2013

Garnering a Share from fans, friends, subscribers and followers is the new top goal in social media. Like takes a back seat; you still want likes but your brand needs shares in order to create the kind of viral visibility that was once known as word of mouth promotion. Facebook values shares as a more reliable indicator of a deeper relationship with your followers than just a like.

Facebook rewards brands for posting pictures by giving those posts higher EdgeRank.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that social media users love inspirational or educational quotes. Your brand can benefit from the quote craze, garnering exponentially more likes and shares than the tip or quote alone simply by creating an attractive poster for the quote. By poster, I simply mean placing the quote on a nice background or block of color to create a pleasing that others will find desirable to share.

5 Strategies to Boost Your Brand Visibility and Rank Through Search

By Cindy Ratzlaff February 20, 2013

by Cindy Ratzlaff

Ranking through search engines like Google, Bing, YouTube and others should be one of your goals. After all, if people don’t find what you’ve written, you’re a diarist, not a teacher, coach or business blogger. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re creating products, services and content as a business and want to increase your search ranking and help new clients discover you, there are a few visibility and ranking strategies to keep in mind.

Expanding Your Brand

By Cindy Ratzlaff November 10, 2011

Brands must evolve and expand or they’ll end up losing market share to competitors. Kodak decided to stick with film. You know how that story ended. But how does a brand create logical brand extensions, products and services that are within their wheelhouse, without stretching their human and financial capital to the breaking point. They frequently take baby steps.

When Oreo wanted to capture more of the cookie market, they created the chocolate Oreo and the double stuffed Oreo. They didn’t create wagons. Many authors, entrepreneurs and small business owners struggle with their portfolio of services or products.

You are a brand. Your products or services are your brand offerings. When you add something new to your offerings, that becomes your brand extension.

Let’s say you are a successful author. You’ve written a great book on marketing. You’ve promoted the book with advertising, personal appearances, traditional media and even social media. Your brand, to the consumer, is “marketing expert.” Now you’re ready to add something new to your services. You might add consulting, coaching, webinars or live trainings. But if you were to add a cookbook to your brand, you’d have a great deal of work to do in order to bring people along with you as you evolve your brand from business to baking. BUT, if cooking is your passion and you’re using cooking as a metaphor for blending, mixing and creating a product, you’d have a brand extension. If the book were about your favorite cookie recipes, you’d need a new branding strategy.

It’s possible for a personal brand to evolve and include a wide variety of products and services. However, adding things far afield from a brand’s original DNA is best done once the brand is mature and the brand leader (YOU) is well established and has a strong and loyal following.

A Self-Evaluation is Your Road Map for Action

For the rest of us, annual evaluation and planning for our emerging brand life cycle is an exercise worth doing. As you plan your growth, ask yourself the following questions:

Where’s the money? What is my most profitable offering right now? In other words, what are people buying from me now? When people are willing to part with their money to purchase your products or services, that’s the simplest and purest market research.
Customer needs: are my current clients or customers asking me for additional information or services I don’t yet provide? If those services or products are within your skill set, this is the proverbial low hanging fruit. Put energy and time into providing your current client base with what they are already asking you to offer.
Next offer: after I’ve delivered my first product or service to a client, and I know they are happy, what do I want to offer them next? This is the beginning of your funnel. Take note of the needs of your clients. See if there are natural additional ways to serve your client base. Repeat this question after every new product or service to create additional offerings.
Brand extension: once you’ve developed a client base the trusts you and is thrilled with what you offer, you can begin to stretch your brand. This is best done in increments. Taking our example, the marketing book author might now write about sales by making the connection in the consumers mind between sales and marketing and letting marketers know they also have to be salespeople, especially if they are entrepreneurs or small business owners. Next, our expert might branch out and claim mind share as a provider of information about product development, distribution and even sourcing. He or she might divide upcoming product offerings into categories that provide deep knowledge in the how-to aspects of each phase of creating new products or services. Then our expert could create speeches, live events, webinars, DVD series, more books and other creative delivery systems for those new products.

Brand development is like story telling. Don’t try to take your reader from “Once Upon a Time,” to “the wicked witch was dead” in two steps. Tell the full story. Lead the consumer through your thinking process by offering logical, helpful, inventive product and service development. And, every step of the way, double check to see that your brand development is ringing true with your customer base. Brand storytelling is marketing. Your ideal reader or client isn’t interested in a one sentence story that shouts “buy my product, buy my product.” Your idea consumer wants you to paint a picture or a solution, entertainment or convenience that your product will introduce into their lives. They want to see themselves using the product, reading the book or enjoying your services. Your story should reveal a path from where people are now to where they could go if they do business with you.

When you’re clear about your intentions and you have your marketing story polished, then you can add a brand extension that will resonate with your fan base.

How to Price Your Services | Entrepreneur Tips

By Cindy Ratzlaff August 11, 2011

The Entrepreneurial formula goes something like this. Identify a need in the market, conceptualize the product or service to fill that need, price it to move, test the market interest in your product and either go back to the drawing board or launch.

The successful entrepreneur will research, test, price and market according to the results of his or her testing or will go straight to market on a concept that has little or no developmental costs. For example, a business coach who already has a program that he or she does one on one with clients could easily take the program to webinars without much testing by recording it using any number of programs such as Keynote for Mac, Camtasia or ScreenFlow to name a few.

If the entrepreneur has a product or service that delivers value, has identified the likely end user or client and is ready to test the waters, pricing strategies now come into play.

The number one question I get from entrepreneurs is “what should I charge?”

I can’t tell you what to charge for your product or service. That depends on your niche market, the product or service itself, perceived value, quality of delivery, what your competitors charge and many other variables. What I can share with you is that most marketing professionals see a significant drop off in opt-ins or purchases when a consumer is given too many choices. In other words, make your offer simple and increase the chances of consumers taking immediate action and purchasing your product.

There’s a theory that offering more than three choices to people decreases the likelihood of purchase. They become overwhelmed, feel confused and in some cases, suspect that they’ll make the wrong choice and not get the best deal. Here’s the pricing formula I see most often in researching internet marketing guru sites. We’ll use consulting services for our example.

The A, B, and C Concept for Consultants

Package A: This package offers people the chance to consult with you for your highest hourly rate and for the lowest commitment. For example: Two sixty-minute calls per month for $500 with a one month commitment required. In the Package A scenario, people can commit to just one month and pay you $500 to “sample” your services and if your consulting proves valuable, you can convert them to a longer term package. In this scenario, it’s essential that the consultant bring their A game to Package A, and deliver such value and solution based advice that the client can’t image themselves without your assistance going forward. In our example, Package A works out to $250 per hour for a total client commitment of $500.

Package B: This package offers the best value and is the one you really want people to choose because you know that you can make a bigger difference in your client’s business or life if you have more time to do so. So you make it significantly more desirable financially to choose Package B, BUT you require the client to commit to a longer package and thus a larger financial investment. For example: Two sixty-minute calls each month for a three month period would be priced at a discounted $225 per call. Clients save $25 per hour by committing to a three-month package. Package B offers the client a total of 6 consultations at $225 each for contractual agreement of $1,350 and a savings of $150 over your standard hourly consulting fee.

Package C: This package is your high-end offer and requires the longest commitment but gives the highest value. Here you are rewarding clients who are willing to invest in intensive committed work with you by giving them the steepest discount BUT making them commit to the highest out of pocket cost. If clients choose this package, they’ll be saving $3,000 over your regularly hourly consulting rate. This package would offer one 60-minute call per week for a total of three months or 12 calls at $200 for $2,400.

The thinking behind these package strategies is that the clients who choose Package A are exploring. The clients who choose Package B want to invest in their business but are cautious and careful and want experiential proof that you can deliver what they need. The clients who choose Package C are ready to move forward in their business, believe you are the one who can help them and want to take advantage of the maximum financial discount you’re offering.

Whatever package they choose, your job there is to over deliver to the point that they feel they truly desire to have more of your time and they’ll contract for more or if their needs have been met, they’ll give you a great reference you can use to attract other clients.

At the end of any Package contract, always ask the client if their needs were met. If not, work to rectify that. If so, ask if they will give you a testimonial quote that you can use on your website. Most people will say yes. Then you’ll be promoting your services with positive, real life case study quotes.

4 Rules Every Social Media Marketer Can Learn from Improv

By Cindy Ratzlaff April 11, 2011

Many of you know I began my career as an improvisational actress. I’ve shared the stage with or taught classes to Bruce Willis, Kathy Kinney, John Leguizamo, radio and voice over personality Buzz Brainard, directors Bob Koherr and Peggy Rajski and even casting legend, David Rubin. What most people don’t know is that improvisation looks like free form conversational style theater, but in fact, it’s a structured technique that employs just four clear, crisp rules. The rules of improvisation are surprisingly similar to those for using social media platforms as a marketing vehicle.

Everything I know about Social Media Marketing, I learned in improv.

The four rules of improv can be summarized as:

who and what
when and where
yes, and
don’t deny

Who and What

Who you are to one another and what you’re doing are essential elements to establishing an interesting improvisational scene. They’re also key to establishing trust and social proof when engaging with others online. Establishing who you are and what you offer helps you attract potential clients who may be interested in your products or services. Demonstrate your expertise and provide social proof through actively sharing advise or strategies in your field. An improv actor might start a scene by saying, “Hello Nanny, it’s been a long semester and I’m delighted to see you again. Let me help you with those toys.” The audience will instantly know the relationship, and what they are doing. An entrepreneur might say, “When Forbes called me a “must follow” on Twitter, I realized I needed to share my techniques with others. My new webinar starts on Friday.”

When and Where

The when and where of an improv scene helps give the players clues as to how to communicate during the scene. The object of establishing a strong when and where is to help the players and the audience envision a scene with no props. On social media platforms, we’re using very few props other that words and the occasional video, photo or audio file. We need to establish help the consumer visualize our brand, our offering, our service. The actor in our scene above might say, “My playroom looks the same as it did when I was five. Even though I’m almost grown, I still have trouble sharing these toys with my little sister, Nanny.” Now the audience has a strong sense of the scene, the players and way they’ll interact with one another. To establish a clear when and where, the entrepreneur in our scenario above might say, “I’m thrilled to be offering this webinar, free of charge, this week right on my Facebook page, using LiveStream. Join me!”

Yes, And

In improvisation, a sacred rule is to listen to your fellow actor speak, then silently say to yourself, “Yes, and…” then add information. If one actor says, “I love your beautiful dress,” and the next actor says “I think I’ll walk the dog,” the audience and the actors suddenly seem confused. But if the answer to the first statement is “Why thank you. I bought it with the money you generously sent me in my birthday card, ” now we have a scene and a deeper relationship between the two characters. So our entrepreneur above needs to listen to his or her fans and followers to see how they responds to the LiveStream news, silently say “yes, and” and add more information. Example: “Will the event be recorded so I can listen later if I miss it live?” (Yes, and) “It will be recorded, Joyce, and I’ll be answering questions all week on my Facebook fan page.”

Don’t Deny
Denying someone’s statement in improv is tricky and can bring a scene to a halt, causing. If the first actor says, “What a beautiful, sunny day,” and the second actor says “No it’s not, it’s raining,” the next several moments will be a battle of wills to see who defines the scene, creating chaos onstage. In our entrepreneurial world, think about keeping the flow of ideas and questions coming and encouraging conversation to build relationships. Our entrepreneur above would be struggling to keep clients if he kept denying their needs or the way they receive his products. How would their future relationship go if our entrepreneur said, “You didn’t do the things I recommended, so you can’t expect the results I promised.” While that might be true, a more productive way to move this relationship forward might be, “I understand that you’re not ready to move forward on my original list of suggestions. Let me come back to you with some new ideas to see if we can overcome your concerns and still produce the result you’re hoping for.”

Every entrepreneur is really an improvisational artist. He or she works with new clients or customers and new situations all the time. Entrepreneurs need to be quick on their feet, flexible in their ideas and creative in their leadership. Everything I know about social media marketing, I learned from improv. All the web is a social stage, and remembering the four rules of improv can improve our social interactions.

How are you employing the rules of improv in your business? I’d love to hear ways in which you’ve set the scene, communicated clearly, turned a negative into a positive and added information. If you enjoyed this post, I’d very much appreciate it if you’d leave a comment.

The Brand of You | The Four V’s of Branding

By Cindy Ratzlaff October 27, 2010

Here’s the Cindy Ratzlaff quick branding MBA in a nutshell. You are a brand whether you’re a student looking for that first job out of school or an entrepreneur creating a product in your home office or an author about to publish your first book. You, the person, are a brand. When you understand that one simple truth, you can purposefully plan how to communicate your brand promise to the world.

The four V’s of branding are essential elements to consider when creating and communicating your brand.

Voice
Your voice is your message and your tone. Think about how you want your brand to be perceived and experienced. Create a short list of three words that clearly lay out your tone. Are you sharp, fast, and pointed? Are you or your product smooth, easy and effective? Will you make your customers life stress-free, unburdened and organized? Choose your words, try them on for size and make sure they convey your brand promise.

Visuals
Now that you know your tone of voice, turn your attention to the look. Consumers have different learning styles. Some will immediately respond to your voice. Others will be swayed by your visual appeal. Match your imagery to your message to reinforce your brand promise. Remember that your brand promise begins with you, so invest in quality professional photography to put your best face forward in social media and on the web in general. When you meet clients, employers, or colleagues who have only known you on line, you want to hear, “I recognized you from your social media avatar,” not “Wow, you look so different from your picture.” A professional looking picture engenders confidence in your potential to solve a customer’s problem and that’s really what all brands do; solve a problem.

Value
Make sure that you know the competitive landscape for your product or service in your arena. Design your offerings, your desired salary or your product price to reflect true market value. Understanding your potential customer’s most urgent needs will help you here. In social media implementation, for example, clients can be expected pay more for campaigns that are a rush and a more reasonable rate if they’ve planned ahead. Price your services based on time and experience needed, resources required and fair market value.

Variation
Your service or product variation is your point of differentiation. How do you or your product differ from every other product or service that is offered? Some points of differentiation might be affordability, location, education, experience, testimonials, first to market, or fame. Spend time creating your list of ways in which you and your product can answer this question from your potential customer. “Why should I buy this product or service from you instead of someone else?”

Using the Four V’s to plan your brand strategy will keep you focused, honest with yourself and help you identify your personal brand strengths.