Skip links

Noesis Marketing

A Deeper Understanding of Inbound Marketing

Header Right

Branding

7 Free Ways to Become Smarter About Marketing Today

by

Get Smart about MarketingWe live in amazing times, there are efforts all over the world to democratize education by making it available for anyone willing to seek it out and put in a little effort. While it might not come with fancy degrees or initials to put after your name there are tons of resources out there that will help you become smarter about marketing (or just about any other subject) for free! Below is a list of just a few resources to consider:

Khan Academy:

This is an incredible project that is bringing word-class education to anyone willing to put in the time. For marketers looking to brush up on statistics (that’s what I’m working on), or even if you want to learn more about venture capital markets, finance, economics, or a myriad of other subjects you need to check this site out.

 

From their website:

All of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.

Watch Salman Kahn’s TED talk:

Blogs:

You’re reading one right now so you’re probably pretty aware of the value that blogs can bring, but just in case here are a few resources that you might find helpful.

Check out the Ad Age Power 150 to get started.

Check out Guy Kawasaki’s incredible resource Alltop where he seemingly aggregates everything and everybody including perennial favs Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, Copyblogger, and Mashable.

Business 2 Community has become a content juggernaut with great marketing articles being generated by a powerful community of marketing pros.

You can always count on Technorati to find the most popular blogs on the intertubes.

Podcasts:

It’s amazing to me that so many great marketing pros are willing to share so much knowledge with the rest of us free of charge. Here are a few that I listen to regularly and love.

Marketing Over Coffee: Christopher Penn and John Wall share their musings and knowledge in roughly 20-30 minute chunks in this casual podcast.

Six Pixels of Separation: Mitch Joel brings marketing insights through interviews with some of the most influential minds in digital marketing.

The Accidental Creative: Todd Henry shares powerful and digestible ideas to help bring out the creative genius in all of us.

The BeanCast: A powerul mix of serious and hilarious marketing analysis, worth every minute.

Quora:

Quora has become an important source of information with a community of experts that answer specific questions about organized topics. Perhaps their website can describe it better….

Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question.

I use quora to follow some of these marketing topics, web analytics, inbound marketing, branding, personal development, web marketing, Google Analytics, and personal branding. Quora is also social in nature and allows members to build credibility in topics of their choice by answering questions posed by other users.

Social:

Social media is a fantastic way to stay on top of the latest marketing news. If you have a preferred platform, go find the marketers you like and follow them, they are constantly posting relevant information that can help you move forward in your career, and who knows, you might find a connection that you never expected.

Twitter: Social Media Magazine has some great lists, but here is one that has the top 100 marketing authors on Twitter.

Facebook: Many companies have very informational Facebook feeds including the American Marketing Association, Hubspot, Marketing Profs, and Guy Kawasaki, but I reserve Facebook for mostly personal purposes so I don’t go too overboard there.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is another great resource for learning. Search for marketing groups that interest you (there are tons of them out there), hop in and contribute and you’ll be learning while building your personal brand!

TED:

TED talks are an unbelievable resource about all kinds of ideas, from technology to education, science to global development, art to medicine, and of course business. Started by Chris Anderson a few years ago, TED talks are going on all over the world, with ordinary people now organizing their own smaller, independant conferences called TEDx. TED talks usually come in bite size 5-15 minute chunks and are full of incredible ideas from some of the most fascinating minds in the world. If you want to become smarter about a range of topics, try listening to one TED talk a week and there is no doubt you will be blown away.

Library:

I don’t want to insult anyone’s intelligence, if you haven’t been to your local library to see what books are out there you’ll probably be surprised by what you find. Take a trip and find out for yourself.

What other ideas do you have for becoming a smarter marketer for free?

Marketers Need Tough Skin

by

Marketers need tough skinMarketing isn’t as glamorous as many people think. While its rewarding work and I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else, it’s difficult, complex, and it requires tough skin. I have a long way to go, but I already know the path to being a truly great marketer is through constant education, a willingness to take risks, an open mind, and putting in a lot of hard work. It’s tough work and it inherently leaves you exposed to criticism. You can’t do it all and you can’t please everyone, you have to do what you can, focus on the areas that will make the largest gains and move forward a little bit each day.

So why do marketers need such tough skin?

  • Everybody thinks they “get” marketing
  • Marketing is the most visible (and visual) aspect of an organization
  • Being creative takes guts
  • There’s always a different way to do something
  • Good marketers take risks, sometimes they don’t work out
  • A new, senior person comes in and has a different (perhaps better) approach
  • People don’t realize how much work goes into a particular project
  • It’s easier to criticize than offer solutions
  • Marketing spans many aspects of a company including product management, sales, communications, and culture
  • Executives think they know more and push marketers to make questionable decisions
  • Techniques and best-practices move quickly, you need to keep up
  • People often want you to make promises about results when there are variables out of your control

What are some of the challenges that you’ve faced in the past? What did you do to keep moving forward?

Building a Brand Pyramid

by

Lately I’ve been learning a lot about branding, some of it is conventional wisdom that many marketers know but some of it is new to me, and it might just be new to you too. As we’ve been examining our current positioning and brand strategy at my day job, we’ve been approaching this new effort in the context of a “brand pyramid”.  This is a very structured way of crafting a communication strategy that creates brand synergy starting with the features and attributes of a product or service all the way up to the “brand idea”. The “brand idea” being the essence of what you provide to the marketplace, distilled down to one word if at all possible.

Brand Pyramid Template

Level One: Attributes and Features

This is where the heavy lifting begins, especially if you offer a complicated product or service. I’ve found it helpful to separate your product or service features into categories, then focus on those attributes that are most desirable and/or that provide differentiation.

Level Two: Functional Benefits

Identify the tangible benefits that consumers will experience by using your product or service, ie: ROI, cost savings, time savings, enhanced productivity, whiter teeth, a flat stomach…you get the idea

Level Three: Emotional Benefits

This is where the fun really begins, now identify the intangible benefits that consumers will experience, ie: Happiness, confidence, more time, peace of mind, more attention, etc…

Level Four: Brand Personality

Based on what you’ve done so far, think about what your brand personality is. This is where the magic starts to happen. Your brand personality will dictate how consumers respond to your brand on an emotional level. It manifests itself in human characteristics such as sincerity, competence, or fun, just to name a few.

Level Five: Brand Idea

This is the essence of your brand, distilled down as succinctly as your product or service will allow, this is the idea that you want your customers to think of every time they hear or see your brand.

Starting with the foundation of your attributes and features you will needs to roll each level into the next creating a synergistic relationship between each level of the pyramid until it ends with the true essence of your brand. You can use this same structure to build a messaging strategy for different segments of your audience; this certainly applies if you are selling into a B2B situation where people in different roles will experience different benefits from your product.

Of course, this is just one method for clarifying a branding strategy, what are some other methods you’re using?