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Day: December 4, 2019

Brand Secrets for Standing Out in a Crowded World


These days, we live in a world of infinite supply…

In just a few clicks, anyone can start a business. Anyone can create products, build an online store, publish ads, and reach an audience online. This means that every market is becoming flooded with businesses offering similar products, features, and solutions. 

So to stand out you need to have a brand that your customers connect with, and care about deeply. 

In this post, we’ll be sharing some tips and strategies to help you to build your brand. These insights all come from our new podcast series — it’s called Breaking Brand and it’s out there for you to listen to right now

What exactly is a brand?

Before we jump into some strategies and tactics for creating a brand your customers will truly care about, let’s first look at what exactly a brand is. 

The word “brand” is used a lot in marketing today. But what exactly does brand mean? That question that might sound simple… but is actually pretty complex, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer.

David Ogilvy describes a brand as “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes.”

Marty Neumeier, an author and speaker who writes about branding and innovation, says “a brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.”

And Camille Baldwin, one of the Pattern Brands founding team, and star of Breaking Brand, says “brand to me is identity. It’s all of the things that make up identity, your values, your principles, who you are, your characteristics and your intention.”

Brand to me is identity. It’s all of the things that make up identity, your values, your principles, who you are, your characteristics and your intention.

Camille Baldwin, VP of Brand, Pattern Brands

So to summarize… Your brand is the identity of your business, and how it makes people feel. 

Now, let’s dive into some takeaways from Breaking Brand to help you build a buzzworthy brand that stands out against your competitors.

4 Ways to build a memorable brand

1. Know what your consumers care about

Most people are really good at explaining the “what” and the “how” of their business. For example, say you’re an accountancy company, describing the what and the how is pretty simple…

  • What you do is you help individuals and businesses to ensure their finances are in shape.
  • How you do it might vary, but it tends to involve some form of account management where you assist with invoicing or balance the books every month or quarter.

And the thing that will help one accountancy company stand out from its competitors is moving from the what and the how to the why.

The “why” is what will make a potential customer choose your business over another. The “why” is your differentiator. 

In general, consumers aren’t too fussed about how you do your work — the tools you use, your internally processes, and things like that. What consumers care about is “why does this business matter in my life?” 

And to go back to the accountancy example — we already explained the what and the how — but the “why” might not be so obvious. For example, if an accountancy company mostly serves small businesses, the “why” might freeing up time for the business owner to spend with family and friends. 

So how do you find your why? 

Customer research is a great place to start.

At Buffer we often do research interviews with customers to learn how our product helps them, and to better understand how they describe the benefits of Buffer. We’ve even had teammates spend the day with customers at their offices to see first-hand how Buffer fits into their routines and workflows.

And in Breaking Brand, Emmet Shine, co-founder of Pattern Brands, talks about the importance of knowing the customer when it comes to building a brand consumers will care about.

Before starting Pattern Brands, Emmett helped over 50 businesses launch to market, and one of those businesses was Sweetgreen, a restaurant chain selling healthy salads and grain bowls.

When working on the Sweetgreen brand and trying to understand its customers, Emmett and his team spent countless hours at Sweetgreen restaurants. They would watch how the staff would prepare salads, listen to how customers would place orders and immerse themselves in how the company works.

Essentially, they were trying to understand every tiny detail about what made Sweetgreen unique and special. 

This enabled the team to craft a brand that really emphasised what customers were looking for from Sweetgreen and helped them to find their “why”. 

Now Sweetgreen has over 75 restaurants and reportedly generated in excess of £100 million in 2018. So they clearly have a brand that fits what consumers are looking for.

2. Find the technical, functional, and emotional benefits of your business

Once you’ve done your customer research, you can begin to think about the various types of benefits your business offers consumers.

In episode one of Breaking Brand, Pattern’s VP of Brand, Camille Baldwin shares how the brand pyramid framework can help you to define those benefits. 

Brand pyramids have been around since the late nineties, but still play a key role in brand strategy. Pyramids help you to answer fundamental questions about your business and its place in the market. Here’s an example brand pyramid from Insead Knowledge:

Three of the key elements of any brand pyramid are the technical, functional and emotional benefits your business offers consumers. 

Technical benefits

At the bottom of your pyramid, you’re thinking about the technical benefits of your brand (labeled ‘Features and attributes’ in the above image). Essentially this will help you to define what you do as a company. At this stage you’ll want to ask questions like: How is this business benefiting the consumers? How will it make money? What are we offering? 

For example, at Buffer we might say the technical benefit of our product is to manage all of your social media content and profiles in one place. 

Functional benefits

Then, with the technical benefits of your brand defined, it’s time to look at the functional benefits you can offer consumers. Functional benefits are essentially what your customers get when they buy your product or service.

Functional benefits tend to focus on things like how a product can improve your life, help you stay connected to others or help you to make forward progress. 

At Buffer, a functional benefit might be not having to hit publish manually every-time you want to share to social media. Or in the case of a car: a big, spacious family car will offer the functional benefit of space for your whole family to travel in comfort. 

Emotional benefits

Next up, are emotional benefits. And these are really what makes one brand stand out from another.

Emotional benefits are how your brand makes someone feel based on the stories you tell consumers. 

One emotional benefit of Nike, for example, is that its equipment will make you feel like a professional athlete. And at Buffer we might say the emotional benefit of our product is peace of mind knowing that your content will be posted to social media platforms at exactly the right time every time. 

As you go through everything you’ve learned during your customer research phase, start looking out for emotion-based words your customers, or potential customers, use to describe your company or the problem you’re solving. 

Whenever someone says “I feel” or “it made me.. happy, relaxed, proud, or healthy”, for example, this helps you to identify the emotional benefits your company delivers. 

 3. Craft a simple tagline and message

Just Do It, Think Different, I’m Lovin’ It… 

Those are all examples of great brand taglines. By saying just two or three words, I bet you knew exactly which businesses I was talking about. And that’s the power of being able to boil your message down to something simple, and memorable. 

In episode three of Breaking Brand, Emmett Shine, co-founder of Pattern Brands explains: “The thing about branding and marketing, is you can do years worth of research. But if you can’t boil it down to this thin sliced tagline it doesn’t matter.”

The thing about branding and marketing, is you can do years worth of research. But if you can’t boil it down to this thin sliced tagline it doesn’t matter.

Emmett Shine, Executive Creative Director, Pattern Brands

But this isn’t easy to do.

It took the Patten Brands team months of ideating and back-and-forth to land on their tagline “Enjoy Daily Life”.

But now that simple statement acts as a guiding light for everything they do. From the content they post on social media to the products they sell. 

Boiling your whole business down to one sentence, or even just a couple of words can be very tough. And you can’t force it. One of the best ways to craft the perfect tagline is to facilitate brainstorms and create space for idea sharing. Another thing the Pattern Brands team has done was to journal about their business and riff on ideas in private too. 

And sometimes the best ideas will come to you outside of the office. So don’t be afraid to think outside the box, and away from your desk. 

Communicating a clear message in just a few words is very difficult. One way we’ve found to come up with taglines at Buffer is to start long and edit down.

So to begin with, write exactly what your business delivers for customers in as many words as it take — this could be a paragraph or two, maybe even longer. And remember to think about the emotional benefits here too, not just the technical and functional benefits you offer. 

Next, you’ll want to take what you’ve just written and edit it down to just one or two sentences. Repeat that process to make it one sentence, or just a few words. Then take that final piece of copy and play with a number of different versions: Rewrite it, change out words, and experiment with different lengths. This process will help you to distill all of the thoughts you wanted to share about your business into a short, memorable tagline. 

Now you might be wondering: “Why is a tagline so important?” 

From personal experience, I know I’ve never bought a Mac because their tagline is “think different.” But having that tagline in places means that Apple has a clear mission, and everything it does — from the adverts it makes, to its keynote launches — is guided by that vision.

4. Ensure your business lives and breaths your brand

To be successful, and for consumers to trust your message, you have to live your brand. 

For example, Nike says its mission is to “bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.” And the company sees every single person as an athlete, not just the pros. 

But Nike doesn’t just say that, it lives by it. 

That’s why the company focuses on creating the most innovative clothing and footwear, and why its advertising revolves around inspirational messages and stories.

Nike’s brand is reflected in every piece of content it puts out on social media. Just before writing this, I jumped over to Nike’s main Instagram account, here are just a few posts I spotted:

  • An IGTV video with Saquon Barkley sharing where his NFL dreams started.
  • A photo of women’s marathon world record holder Brigid Kosgei with former record holder Paula Radcliffe.
  • A photo of Rafael Nadal sharing his ambitions as a child.

Of course, not all businesses will have the resources of Nike, or the access to global superstars for that matter. But it still serves of a great example of ensuring the essense of your brand shines through on every platform. 

To go back to the accountancy example I mentioned earlier. If your “why” or emotional benefit is giving small business owners more free time to spend away from work, you could ensure all of your messaging and content supports this mission. This could mean Instagram posts with clients enjoying themselves away from the office or blog posts about disconnecting from work. It could even mean you rethink the imagery and copy you use on your website.

As I mentioned right at the start of this post, your brand is the identity of your business and how it makes people feel. So every single touchpoint where someone can interact with your business should represent what you want your brand to be, and how you want people to feel. 

#382: You, a Book Coach? with Jennie Nash

If you love writing, writers and words, this episode is for you. I spoke with Jennie Nash, founder of Author Accelerator and author of the new book, Read Books All Day & Get Paid For It, about the opportunity to become a book coach and her upcoming free online Business of Book Coaching Summit. If you like what you hear, write a review, subscribe on Apple Podcasts and, one more thing, be sure to sign up for my Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.

How to Run A Content Audit in 2019

Think of all the content you create — the good, the bad, and the ones that take a scary amount of time.

Now think of how you organize it. How do you keep track of how content is performing? Do you use those metrics to improve for future campaigns?

If not, you could be, with the help of content audits.

Content audits keep track of your content, including blog posts, social media posts, events, and web pages, and provide analysis for how they impact audience. Additionally, they can provide insights into how to improve underperforming content, so you know how to properly update your posts for higher conversion rates.

If you’re missing this kind of organization for your company, consider investing in a content audit. They are an excellent planning resource and roadmap for future content creation, while organizing analytics so you can refer back to high-performing posts if needed.

Let’s dive into what content audits look like, how to run one, and tools to help you create the most effective content audit for your needs.

Content Audit Template

When creating a content audit of your own, feel free to refer to HubSpot’s free template for inspiration. It’s available to download from this link, and is previewed here.

content audit template

The template has three different spreadsheets:

  • Content Compass — This helps you organize your monthly content based on your organization’s goals, themes, campaigns, and social media. Think of it as a giant overview of your campaign with a focus on content.
  • Content Audit Worksheet — When you think “content audit,” this is the sheet for it. The categories focus on buyer’s journey stage, lifecycle stage, type of content, buyer personas, and the content topic.
  • Event-Based Audit Worksheet — This sheet is a content audit based on events your organization holds. So if you’re a company that’s heavily invested in events, this spreadsheet will be helpful for you, as the categories revolve around events.

To know which spreadsheet is right for you, or what categories will be useful for your organization, I’m going to walk you through how to run a content audit yourself in the next section.

How to Run a Content Audit

1. Think of your goals.

First, think about what you want to accomplish. When you have your goals in mind, you will have a better idea of how to categorize your audit later.

Ultimately, a content audit identifies engaging content for your audience, and can include information on SEO and conversion rates. One goal to consider could be to identify which of your pages need to be SEO-optimized. Alternatively, you might think about finding the most interesting and best-performing content for your website visitors, and place that on your homepage or in an email newsletter.

Identifying company goals will ensure your content audit is useful for both bookkeeping and updating your strategy with tactics to improve. After this is complete, then it’s time to collect your content.

2. Gather your content.

Which content are you going to audit? The types of audits are typically those for product descriptions, blog posts, multimedia, and publications. Decide this, and gather the backlog of all of that content.

To accomplish this, collect the URLs of the web pages you’ve chosen to audit. If you have a small website, you can do this manually and put them in a spreadsheet, however, there are also online tools to do it for you, like SEMrush, Screaming Frog, and HubSpot.

SEMrush and Screaming Frog will provide this information based on your sitemap. A sitemap is a file that has all of your website’s information and can be created for free online. For more information on sitemaps, check out our guide here.

3. Categorize your content.

After receiving your audit, categorize it on the spreadsheet. Some online tools categorize the information for you, but if you want to go through it yourself, that’s also doable. The categories will keep you organized so you can ensure your content audit meets your needs.

Some categories you can include are content type, author(s), publication date, and content format. Think of categories that are useful to know from different pieces of content. For instance, if you are auditing blog posts, important information to pull would be the date of publication or update, the author, the type of content, and metadata (Such as the title and description).

Another important category is metrics. Some online tools will include them in the audit, but Google Analytics can also pull data for you. Metrics can provide more information for your analysis later.

At this point, your spreadsheet should have URLs of your content, categories, metadata (if included), and metric data.

4. Analyze your data.

Now, it’s time to look at your data critically. This is the step that will give you a good measure of the state of your content. When analyzing your data, here are some things to take note of:

  • Content that’s missing — What is your audience interested in that you haven’t covered?
  • Content that’s underperforming — Which pieces of content aren’t getting the numbers you want?
  • Outdated content — If you have old content, can it be updated or reworked to maintain optimization?
  • Home run content — Content that has performed extremely well.

Based on the results of this analysis, organize them in the spreadsheet. A way to do this is to assign different colors based on what you’re analyzing and highlight the rows with those colors so you have an idea of which category is which, and which ones take up the largest portion of your overall content library.

5. Create action items.

In this step, you will finalize and clean up your audit. You now know what to focus on based on the analysis and can go from there. Think about the posts to delete, update, re-write, or re-structure.

To organize these action items, add one last column to the spreadsheet — one that’s close to the front so you can keep tabs on it. This column will let you know the action to take on a specific URL. Are you going to keep, update, delete, or re-write that blog post?

If you plan on ranking by priority or including a timeline for this audit, now would be the time to include that, as well. Some organizations use full-blown content calendars, while others don’t need it. To make a priority timeline that fits in best with your content audit, think back to your goals and which items make sense to execute first.

Now, let’s go over some content audit tools you can use to further automate your content audit process.

Content Audit Tools

1. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a website crawler. It collects URLs from your sitemap and create an SEO audit for you. If you have a smaller site, Screaming Frog can audit up to 500 links for free.

The desktop Screaming Frog website is great because it provides you a ton of analysis about your website, and categorizes it for you. Because the audit is SEO-based, it also gives you information on how to improve your SEO, which is likely useful, depending on your goals.

Price: First 500 links free, unlimited for $150/year

2. SEMrush

In three steps, users of SEMrush can receive a robust audit. By putting in the desired domain, you can select sections of the website you’d like to audit from your sitemap.

From there, you can connect an analytics tool account, like Google Analytics, if you want to see more information about your sitemap, like posts that are the most engaging for your audience. You can use this information when developing strategy — identifying content that performs well for your audience gives you an idea of what to cover.

Price: Free plan, or $99-$399/month

3. Google Analytics

While Google Analytics doesn’t give you a traditional audit, it provides good information that will help you formulate your audit. It lets you know who is visiting your website, and from where. Additionally, it gives a rundown on the behaviors of your visitors.

It gives you data about the amount of time visitors are seeing on webpages, the most popular webpages, and different patterns seen in your visitors. One of these patterns could be the most popular blog post in the US from visitors aged 18-24.

Price: Free

4. DYNO Mapper

If you’re looking for a sitemap generator, DYNO Mapper has that function available. Also available on DYNO Mapper — a content audit tool. This website is really good at finding potential problems in the SEO of your content.

DYNO Mapper also keeps a progress report of your audits, so you can monitor how they’re improving and performing. The audits themselves present how your content can be given in the best way to search engines, an excellent metric for content audits.

Price: $40-$399/month

5. WooRank

WooRank has two amazing features for content auditing: SEO monitoring and Site Crawler. SEO Monitoring from WooRank lets you know the state of performance on your landing pages, which is information you can put into an audit. It also lets you know if your website ever goes down and how that affected SEO, another metric to import if you’re tracking web page metrics in your audit.

The Site Crawl feature lets you know how Google sees your site and interprets the information for search engines. This information is great knowledge to make audits more effective when you’re coming up with action items for the future.

Price: $60-$249/month

Now that you know ample knowledge about content audits, how to create them, where to source them, and important essentials to include, you are fully prepared to incorporate them into your organization. Give it a try, and use it to elevate your next campaign. Happy auditing!

The One Thing Every Marketer Should Do

Marketers tend to be very reactive.

And it makes sense because every time a search engine or a social network changes their algorithm we jump as marketers.

We are conditioned to be very reactive. Whether it’s your boss who is pissed that your traffic dips or even yourself… everyone hates when sales and income drop because of something you can’t fully control.

And even when you try to be proactive, you are probably planning ahead from a 3-month period to a year max.

But that’s not how you win. You win by making bold bets that take time and can’t be done in a few months or a year… you win by doing what your competition isn’t willing to do.

So how do you come up with these bold bets?

You unplug!

Here’s how I come up with my ideas

Once a year I try to unplug. Just like right now, as I am writing this I don’t have cell reception and there is no WiFi.

I’m on a ranch in the middle of nowhere.

No matter where I look, there are no neighbors. All you have is nature in its rawest form. Just like how lightning kept going on for hours.

By unplugging and just being one with nature, you truly realize what’s important.

See, we all have problems and issues… especially in business. But how bad are your problems? Do they even matter in the grand scheme of things?

Look, I’ll be honest with you. I am not a big nature person… I’m actually quite the opposite.

I live in a modern, cold feeling house in a heavily congested city. I’m so OCD that I have a full-time cleaner come just because I’m afraid of getting dirty (seriously).

Heck, I won’t even go through airport security without having booties in my briefcase, just in the rare chance they make me take off my shoes. There is no way I can have my socks touch that dirty ground.

Yes, I am crazy when it comes to cleanliness and hygiene.

But even me, I go to places that are full of nature and wild animals… or in my case, cows, bears, deer, snakes, mountain lions, etc… being there really helps put things into perspective.

Because when you aren’t surrounded by noise caused by us humans, it allows you to clearly focus and think about what’s important.

For me, spending 3 days a year usually does the trick.

It allows me to forget about the bullshit we all have to deal with on a daily basis and come up with ideas about what I need to do over the next 5 (or even 10) years to win.

I know that sounds like a really long time… and it is. But again, to win you need to think long term and make bold bets that your competition wouldn’t dare to copy.

Just look at what I did with Ubersuggest.

I came up with that idea a few years ago by disconnecting (just like I described above).

Companies like Moz would constantly post their revenue stats and their competitors decided to also talk about their financials. So while being disconnected, I came up with an idea on how I could win and the first step was acquiring a tool like Ubersuggest.

And since then I’ve executed a few of the steps in my plan, but I still have a long way to go.

None-the-less, those steps have paid off. Just look at my traffic numbers.

So what I am going to do over the next 5 to 10 years?

I am going to turn SEO upside down again.

It hit me on this trip that we all have to go to sites like Ubersuggest, SEMrush, Ahrefs, or even Moz to get data.

But why is that?

It’s not natural in our workflow. Wouldn’t it just be easier to see this data as you browse the web?

Like when you search Google for any query sure you can use browser extensions like Keywords Everywhere to get some data or SEOquake or the Mozbar… but what you can’t get is that Ahrefs or SEMrush experience when you are just on a Google Search results page.

What will that look like? I have no clue yet, but I will figure that out over time.

Will that kill the traffic I generate to Ubersuggest over time?

Yes!!!!!!

But that is what needs to be done. I obsess about providing an amazing experience to my customers, even if that will kill off my existing business.

And no, that won’t take 5 years to do… I will probably do it over the next 6 months. I will first roll out a basic plugin like Keywords Everywhere and, eventually, I will add the functionally so you can get that type of Ubersuggest or Ahrefs experience right on Google or on your competitor’s site.

What will happen over the next 5 years though, is that I will be able to build something that gets you more traffic. Just like a light switch. Something that simple.

Why can’t we automate most of our marketing tasks? Why does SEO have to be manual when I can add a piece of JavaScript to a website and automate most of it? Why do I have to send out a blog post every time I release a new post or a push notification?

It should all be automated.

And no, I don’t mean in a templatized way. I manually send out emails every time I write a blog post because I know I can write custom copy that generates a 30% open rate and a high click rate.

But again, it should all be automated. And not just for English based sites, it should be done on a global level and work for every site in any language or country.

So how can you figure out what to focus on?

You may not be able to disconnect like me and spend the money that it costs to go to a ranch in the middle of nowhere.

And that’s fine… you don’t have to.

When I first started off, I didn’t have the resources or money, and I did just fine within my constraints.

For example, roughly 5 years ago I came up with the concept that I needed to go after global markets and compared to any of my competitors in the digital marketing realm, I’ve crushed all of them when it comes to global marketing.

Most of my competitors just translated their site or translated some of their content. Me on the other hand, I have 7 offices and teams in 18 different countries. And I’ll continue to expand so I can keep beating my competition when it comes to grabbing international attention.

But that idea didn’t come to me when I was in nature, being disconnected.

At that time, I was in my condo in the middle of Seattle and I disconnected my Internet for a few days.

Before I disconnected my Internet, I went and got food so I didn’t have to leave my house, and then I turned off all my gadgets… from my TV to phone and anything that was a distraction.

It worked well because now only 18.89% of my traffic is from the United States compared to 57% before I started to expand globally.

In other words, you can disconnect no matter where you are. You just literally have to disconnect your router, turn off your phone, and unplug your TV… it really is that simple.

If you do that for a few days, you’ll start realizing what is important and what isn’t. You’ll be able to strategize and start thinking more long term.

Conclusion

The key to winning long term isn’t by being reactive every time there is an algorithm update or even proactive and preparing for each algorithm update.

Because some of those things are simply out of your control.

Instead, you need to think long term and how you can disrupt your market to make a long-term bet that your competition isn’t willing to make.

Nike wasn’t built by SEO.

Airbnb wasn’t built through paid advertising.

American Express wasn’t built through social media marketing.

Tesla wasn’t built through content marketing.

Doing something disruptive or better than the competition is how you win.

Ubersuggest gets 1,668,233 visitors and 9,136,512 page views a month from people just coming directly. Not through SEO, marketing, or anything like that… I just focus on the future instead of being reactive.

That’s how I win.

Now, the real question is, how are you going to win?

The post The One Thing Every Marketer Should Do appeared first on Neil Patel.

Brand Secrets for Standing Out in a Crowded World


These days, we live in a world of infinite supply…

In just a few clicks, anyone can start a business. Anyone can create products, build an online store, publish ads, and reach an audience online. This means that every market is becoming flooded with businesses offering similar products, features, and solutions. 

So to stand out you need to have a brand that your customers connect with, and care about deeply. 

In this post, we’ll be sharing some tips and strategies to help you to build your brand. These insights all come from our new podcast series — it’s called Breaking Brand and it’s out there for you to listen to right now

What exactly is a brand?

Before we jump into some strategies and tactics for creating a brand your customers will truly care about, let’s first look at what exactly a brand is. 

The word “brand” is used a lot in marketing today. But what exactly does brand mean? That question that might sound simple… but is actually pretty complex, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer.

David Ogilvy describes a brand as “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes.”

Marty Neumeier, an author and speaker who writes about branding and innovation, says “a brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.”

And Camille Baldwin, one of the Pattern Brands founding team, and star of Breaking Brand, says “brand to me is identity. It’s all of the things that make up identity, your values, your principles, who you are, your characteristics and your intention.”

Brand to me is identity. It’s all of the things that make up identity, your values, your principles, who you are, your characteristics and your intention.

Camille Baldwin, VP of Brand, Pattern Brands

So to summarize… Your brand is the identity of your business, and how it makes people feel. 

Now, let’s dive into some takeaways from Breaking Brand to help you build a buzzworthy brand that stands out against your competitors.

4 Ways to build a memorable brand

1. Know what your consumers care about

Most people are really good at explaining the “what” and the “how” of their business. For example, say you’re an accountancy company, describing the what and the how is pretty simple…

  • What you do is you help individuals and businesses to ensure their finances are in shape.
  • How you do it might vary, but it tends to involve some form of account management where you assist with invoicing or balance the books every month or quarter.

And the thing that will help one accountancy company stand out from its competitors is moving from the what and the how to the why.

The “why” is what will make a potential customer choose your business over another. The “why” is your differentiator. 

In general, consumers aren’t too fussed about how you do your work — the tools you use, your internally processes, and things like that. What consumers care about is “why does this business matter in my life?” 

And to go back to the accountancy example — we already explained the what and the how — but the “why” might not be so obvious. For example, if an accountancy company mostly serves small businesses, the “why” might freeing up time for the business owner to spend with family and friends. 

So how do you find your why? 

Customer research is a great place to start.

At Buffer we often do research interviews with customers to learn how our product helps them, and to better understand how they describe the benefits of Buffer. We’ve even had teammates spend the day with customers at their offices to see first-hand how Buffer fits into their routines and workflows.

And in Breaking Brand, Emmet Shine, co-founder of Pattern Brands, talks about the importance of knowing the customer when it comes to building a brand consumers will care about.

Before starting Pattern Brands, Emmett helped over 50 businesses launch to market, and one of those businesses was Sweetgreen, a restaurant chain selling healthy salads and grain bowls.

When working on the Sweetgreen brand and trying to understand its customers, Emmett and his team spent countless hours at Sweetgreen restaurants. They would watch how the staff would prepare salads, listen to how customers would place orders and immerse themselves in how the company works.

Essentially, they were trying to understand every tiny detail about what made Sweetgreen unique and special. 

This enabled the team to craft a brand that really emphasised what customers were looking for from Sweetgreen and helped them to find their “why”. 

Now Sweetgreen has over 75 restaurants and reportedly generated in excess of £100 million in 2018. So they clearly have a brand that fits what consumers are looking for.

2. Find the technical, functional, and emotional benefits of your business

Once you’ve done your customer research, you can begin to think about the various types of benefits your business offers consumers.

In episode one of Breaking Brand, Pattern’s VP of Brand, Camille Baldwin shares how the brand pyramid framework can help you to define those benefits. 

Brand pyramids have been around since the late nineties, but still play a key role in brand strategy. Pyramids help you to answer fundamental questions about your business and its place in the market. Here’s an example brand pyramid from Insead Knowledge:

Three of the key elements of any brand pyramid are the technical, functional and emotional benefits your business offers consumers. 

Technical benefits

At the bottom of your pyramid, you’re thinking about the technical benefits of your brand (labeled ‘Features and attributes’ in the above image). Essentially this will help you to define what you do as a company. At this stage you’ll want to ask questions like: How is this business benefiting the consumers? How will it make money? What are we offering? 

For example, at Buffer we might say the technical benefit of our product is to manage all of your social media content and profiles in one place. 

Functional benefits

Then, with the technical benefits of your brand defined, it’s time to look at the functional benefits you can offer consumers. Functional benefits are essentially what your customers get when they buy your product or service.

Functional benefits tend to focus on things like how a product can improve your life, help you stay connected to others or help you to make forward progress. 

At Buffer, a functional benefit might be not having to hit publish manually every-time you want to share to social media. Or in the case of a car: a big, spacious family car will offer the functional benefit of space for your whole family to travel in comfort. 

Emotional benefits

Next up, are emotional benefits. And these are really what makes one brand stand out from another.

Emotional benefits are how your brand makes someone feel based on the stories you tell consumers. 

One emotional benefit of Nike, for example, is that its equipment will make you feel like a professional athlete. And at Buffer we might say the emotional benefit of our product is peace of mind knowing that your content will be posted to social media platforms at exactly the right time every time. 

As you go through everything you’ve learned during your customer research phase, start looking out for emotion-based words your customers, or potential customers, use to describe your company or the problem you’re solving. 

Whenever someone says “I feel” or “it made me.. happy, relaxed, proud, or healthy”, for example, this helps you to identify the emotional benefits your company delivers. 

 3. Craft a simple tagline and message

Just Do It, Think Different, I’m Lovin’ It… 

Those are all examples of great brand taglines. By saying just two or three words, I bet you knew exactly which businesses I was talking about. And that’s the power of being able to boil your message down to something simple, and memorable. 

In episode three of Breaking Brand, Emmett Shine, co-founder of Pattern Brands explains: “The thing about branding and marketing, is you can do years worth of research. But if you can’t boil it down to this thin sliced tagline it doesn’t matter.”

The thing about branding and marketing, is you can do years worth of research. But if you can’t boil it down to this thin sliced tagline it doesn’t matter.

Emmett Shine, Executive Creative Director, Pattern Brands

But this isn’t easy to do.

It took the Patten Brands team months of ideating and back-and-forth to land on their tagline “Enjoy Daily Life”.

But now that simple statement acts as a guiding light for everything they do. From the content they post on social media to the products they sell. 

Boiling your whole business down to one sentence, or even just a couple of words can be very tough. And you can’t force it. One of the best ways to craft the perfect tagline is to facilitate brainstorms and create space for idea sharing. Another thing the Pattern Brands team has done was to journal about their business and riff on ideas in private too. 

And sometimes the best ideas will come to you outside of the office. So don’t be afraid to think outside the box, and away from your desk. 

Communicating a clear message in just a few words is very difficult. One way we’ve found to come up with taglines at Buffer is to start long and edit down.

So to begin with, write exactly what your business delivers for customers in as many words as it take — this could be a paragraph or two, maybe even longer. And remember to think about the emotional benefits here too, not just the technical and functional benefits you offer. 

Next, you’ll want to take what you’ve just written and edit it down to just one or two sentences. Repeat that process to make it one sentence, or just a few words. Then take that final piece of copy and play with a number of different versions: Rewrite it, change out words, and experiment with different lengths. This process will help you to distill all of the thoughts you wanted to share about your business into a short, memorable tagline. 

Now you might be wondering: “Why is a tagline so important?” 

From personal experience, I know I’ve never bought a Mac because their tagline is “think different.” But having that tagline in places means that Apple has a clear mission, and everything it does — from the adverts it makes, to its keynote launches — is guided by that vision.

4. Ensure your business lives and breaths your brand

To be successful, and for consumers to trust your message, you have to live your brand. 

For example, Nike says its mission is to “bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.” And the company sees every single person as an athlete, not just the pros. 

But Nike doesn’t just say that, it lives by it. 

That’s why the company focuses on creating the most innovative clothing and footwear, and why its advertising revolves around inspirational messages and stories.

Nike’s brand is reflected in every piece of content it puts out on social media. Just before writing this, I jumped over to Nike’s main Instagram account, here are just a few posts I spotted:

  • An IGTV video with Saquon Barkley sharing where his NFL dreams started.
  • A photo of women’s marathon world record holder Brigid Kosgei with former record holder Paula Radcliffe.
  • A photo of Rafael Nadal sharing his ambitions as a child.

Of course, not all businesses will have the resources of Nike, or the access to global superstars for that matter. But it still serves of a great example of ensuring the essense of your brand shines through on every platform. 

To go back to the accountancy example I mentioned earlier. If your “why” or emotional benefit is giving small business owners more free time to spend away from work, you could ensure all of your messaging and content supports this mission. This could mean Instagram posts with clients enjoying themselves away from the office or blog posts about disconnecting from work. It could even mean you rethink the imagery and copy you use on your website.

As I mentioned right at the start of this post, your brand is the identity of your business and how it makes people feel. So every single touchpoint where someone can interact with your business should represent what you want your brand to be, and how you want people to feel. 

The One Thing Every Marketer Should Do

Marketers tend to be very reactive.

And it makes sense because every time a search engine or a social network changes their algorithm we jump as marketers.

We are conditioned to be very reactive. Whether it’s your boss who is pissed that your traffic dips or even yourself… everyone hates when sales and income drop because of something you can’t fully control.

And even when you try to be proactive, you are probably planning ahead from a 3-month period to a year max.

But that’s not how you win. You win by making bold bets that take time and can’t be done in a few months or a year… you win by doing what your competition isn’t willing to do.

So how do you come up with these bold bets?

You unplug!

Here’s how I come up with my ideas

Once a year I try to unplug. Just like right now, as I am writing this I don’t have cell reception and there is no WiFi.

I’m on a ranch in the middle of nowhere.

No matter where I look, there are no neighbors. All you have is nature in its rawest form. Just like how lightning kept going on for hours.

By unplugging and just being one with nature, you truly realize what’s important.

See, we all have problems and issues… especially in business. But how bad are your problems? Do they even matter in the grand scheme of things?

Look, I’ll be honest with you. I am not a big nature person… I’m actually quite the opposite.

I live in a modern, cold feeling house in a heavily congested city. I’m so OCD that I have a full-time cleaner come just because I’m afraid of getting dirty (seriously).

Heck, I won’t even go through airport security without having booties in my briefcase, just in the rare chance they make me take off my shoes. There is no way I can have my socks touch that dirty ground.

Yes, I am crazy when it comes to cleanliness and hygiene.

But even me, I go to places that are full of nature and wild animals… or in my case, cows, bears, deer, snakes, mountain lions, etc… being there really helps put things into perspective.

Because when you aren’t surrounded by noise caused by us humans, it allows you to clearly focus and think about what’s important.

For me, spending 3 days a year usually does the trick.

It allows me to forget about the bullshit we all have to deal with on a daily basis and come up with ideas about what I need to do over the next 5 (or even 10) years to win.

I know that sounds like a really long time… and it is. But again, to win you need to think long term and make bold bets that your competition wouldn’t dare to copy.

Just look at what I did with Ubersuggest.

I came up with that idea a few years ago by disconnecting (just like I described above).

Companies like Moz would constantly post their revenue stats and their competitors decided to also talk about their financials. So while being disconnected, I came up with an idea on how I could win and the first step was acquiring a tool like Ubersuggest.

And since then I’ve executed a few of the steps in my plan, but I still have a long way to go.

None-the-less, those steps have paid off. Just look at my traffic numbers.

So what I am going to do over the next 5 to 10 years?

I am going to turn SEO upside down again.

It hit me on this trip that we all have to go to sites like Ubersuggest, SEMrush, Ahrefs, or even Moz to get data.

But why is that?

It’s not natural in our workflow. Wouldn’t it just be easier to see this data as you browse the web?

Like when you search Google for any query sure you can use browser extensions like Keywords Everywhere to get some data or SEOquake or the Mozbar… but what you can’t get is that Ahrefs or SEMrush experience when you are just on a Google Search results page.

What will that look like? I have no clue yet, but I will figure that out over time.

Will that kill the traffic I generate to Ubersuggest over time?

Yes!!!!!!

But that is what needs to be done. I obsess about providing an amazing experience to my customers, even if that will kill off my existing business.

And no, that won’t take 5 years to do… I will probably do it over the next 6 months. I will first roll out a basic plugin like Keywords Everywhere and, eventually, I will add the functionally so you can get that type of Ubersuggest or Ahrefs experience right on Google or on your competitor’s site.

What will happen over the next 5 years though, is that I will be able to build something that gets you more traffic. Just like a light switch. Something that simple.

Why can’t we automate most of our marketing tasks? Why does SEO have to be manual when I can add a piece of JavaScript to a website and automate most of it? Why do I have to send out a blog post every time I release a new post or a push notification?

It should all be automated.

And no, I don’t mean in a templatized way. I manually send out emails every time I write a blog post because I know I can write custom copy that generates a 30% open rate and a high click rate.

But again, it should all be automated. And not just for English based sites, it should be done on a global level and work for every site in any language or country.

So how can you figure out what to focus on?

You may not be able to disconnect like me and spend the money that it costs to go to a ranch in the middle of nowhere.

And that’s fine… you don’t have to.

When I first started off, I didn’t have the resources or money, and I did just fine within my constraints.

For example, roughly 5 years ago I came up with the concept that I needed to go after global markets and compared to any of my competitors in the digital marketing realm, I’ve crushed all of them when it comes to global marketing.

Most of my competitors just translated their site or translated some of their content. Me on the other hand, I have 7 offices and teams in 18 different countries. And I’ll continue to expand so I can keep beating my competition when it comes to grabbing international attention.

But that idea didn’t come to me when I was in nature, being disconnected.

At that time, I was in my condo in the middle of Seattle and I disconnected my Internet for a few days.

Before I disconnected my Internet, I went and got food so I didn’t have to leave my house, and then I turned off all my gadgets… from my TV to phone and anything that was a distraction.

It worked well because now only 18.89% of my traffic is from the United States compared to 57% before I started to expand globally.

In other words, you can disconnect no matter where you are. You just literally have to disconnect your router, turn off your phone, and unplug your TV… it really is that simple.

If you do that for a few days, you’ll start realizing what is important and what isn’t. You’ll be able to strategize and start thinking more long term.

Conclusion

The key to winning long term isn’t by being reactive every time there is an algorithm update or even proactive and preparing for each algorithm update.

Because some of those things are simply out of your control.

Instead, you need to think long term and how you can disrupt your market to make a long-term bet that your competition isn’t willing to make.

Nike wasn’t built by SEO.

Airbnb wasn’t built through paid advertising.

American Express wasn’t built through social media marketing.

Tesla wasn’t built through content marketing.

Doing something disruptive or better than the competition is how you win.

Ubersuggest gets 1,668,233 visitors and 9,136,512 page views a month from people just coming directly. Not through SEO, marketing, or anything like that… I just focus on the future instead of being reactive.

That’s how I win.

Now, the real question is, how are you going to win?

The post The One Thing Every Marketer Should Do appeared first on Neil Patel.

The One Thing Every Marketer Should Do

Marketers tend to be very reactive.

And it makes sense because every time a search engine or a social network changes their algorithm we jump as marketers.

We are conditioned to be very reactive. Whether it’s your boss who is pissed that your traffic dips or even yourself… everyone hates when sales and income drop because of something you can’t fully control.

And even when you try to be proactive, you are probably planning ahead from a 3-month period to a year max.

But that’s not how you win. You win by making bold bets that take time and can’t be done in a few months or a year… you win by doing what your competition isn’t willing to do.

So how do you come up with these bold bets?

You unplug!

Here’s how I come up with my ideas

Once a year I try to unplug. Just like right now, as I am writing this I don’t have cell reception and there is no WiFi.

I’m on a ranch in the middle of nowhere.

No matter where I look, there are no neighbors. All you have is nature in its rawest form. Just like how lightning kept going on for hours.

By unplugging and just being one with nature, you truly realize what’s important.

See, we all have problems and issues… especially in business. But how bad are your problems? Do they even matter in the grand scheme of things?

Look, I’ll be honest with you. I am not a big nature person… I’m actually quite the opposite.

I live in a modern, cold feeling house in a heavily congested city. I’m so OCD that I have a full-time cleaner come just because I’m afraid of getting dirty (seriously).

Heck, I won’t even go through airport security without having booties in my briefcase, just in the rare chance they make me take off my shoes. There is no way I can have my socks touch that dirty ground.

Yes, I am crazy when it comes to cleanliness and hygiene.

But even me, I go to places that are full of nature and wild animals… or in my case, cows, bears, deer, snakes, mountain lions, etc… being there really helps put things into perspective.

Because when you aren’t surrounded by noise caused by us humans, it allows you to clearly focus and think about what’s important.

For me, spending 3 days a year usually does the trick.

It allows me to forget about the bullshit we all have to deal with on a daily basis and come up with ideas about what I need to do over the next 5 (or even 10) years to win.

I know that sounds like a really long time… and it is. But again, to win you need to think long term and make bold bets that your competition wouldn’t dare to copy.

Just look at what I did with Ubersuggest.

I came up with that idea a few years ago by disconnecting (just like I described above).

Companies like Moz would constantly post their revenue stats and their competitors decided to also talk about their financials. So while being disconnected, I came up with an idea on how I could win and the first step was acquiring a tool like Ubersuggest.

And since then I’ve executed a few of the steps in my plan, but I still have a long way to go.

None-the-less, those steps have paid off. Just look at my traffic numbers.

So what I am going to do over the next 5 to 10 years?

I am going to turn SEO upside down again.

It hit me on this trip that we all have to go to sites like Ubersuggest, SEMrush, Ahrefs, or even Moz to get data.

But why is that?

It’s not natural in our workflow. Wouldn’t it just be easier to see this data as you browse the web?

Like when you search Google for any query sure you can use browser extensions like Keywords Everywhere to get some data or SEOquake or the Mozbar… but what you can’t get is that Ahrefs or SEMrush experience when you are just on a Google Search results page.

What will that look like? I have no clue yet, but I will figure that out over time.

Will that kill the traffic I generate to Ubersuggest over time?

Yes!!!!!!

But that is what needs to be done. I obsess about providing an amazing experience to my customers, even if that will kill off my existing business.

And no, that won’t take 5 years to do… I will probably do it over the next 6 months. I will first roll out a basic plugin like Keywords Everywhere and, eventually, I will add the functionally so you can get that type of Ubersuggest or Ahrefs experience right on Google or on your competitor’s site.

What will happen over the next 5 years though, is that I will be able to build something that gets you more traffic. Just like a light switch. Something that simple.

Why can’t we automate most of our marketing tasks? Why does SEO have to be manual when I can add a piece of JavaScript to a website and automate most of it? Why do I have to send out a blog post every time I release a new post or a push notification?

It should all be automated.

And no, I don’t mean in a templatized way. I manually send out emails every time I write a blog post because I know I can write custom copy that generates a 30% open rate and a high click rate.

But again, it should all be automated. And not just for English based sites, it should be done on a global level and work for every site in any language or country.

So how can you figure out what to focus on?

You may not be able to disconnect like me and spend the money that it costs to go to a ranch in the middle of nowhere.

And that’s fine… you don’t have to.

When I first started off, I didn’t have the resources or money, and I did just fine within my constraints.

For example, roughly 5 years ago I came up with the concept that I needed to go after global markets and compared to any of my competitors in the digital marketing realm, I’ve crushed all of them when it comes to global marketing.

Most of my competitors just translated their site or translated some of their content. Me on the other hand, I have 7 offices and teams in 18 different countries. And I’ll continue to expand so I can keep beating my competition when it comes to grabbing international attention.

But that idea didn’t come to me when I was in nature, being disconnected.

At that time, I was in my condo in the middle of Seattle and I disconnected my Internet for a few days.

Before I disconnected my Internet, I went and got food so I didn’t have to leave my house, and then I turned off all my gadgets… from my TV to phone and anything that was a distraction.

It worked well because now only 18.89% of my traffic is from the United States compared to 57% before I started to expand globally.

In other words, you can disconnect no matter where you are. You just literally have to disconnect your router, turn off your phone, and unplug your TV… it really is that simple.

If you do that for a few days, you’ll start realizing what is important and what isn’t. You’ll be able to strategize and start thinking more long term.

Conclusion

The key to winning long term isn’t by being reactive every time there is an algorithm update or even proactive and preparing for each algorithm update.

Because some of those things are simply out of your control.

Instead, you need to think long term and how you can disrupt your market to make a long-term bet that your competition isn’t willing to make.

Nike wasn’t built by SEO.

Airbnb wasn’t built through paid advertising.

American Express wasn’t built through social media marketing.

Tesla wasn’t built through content marketing.

Doing something disruptive or better than the competition is how you win.

Ubersuggest gets 1,668,233 visitors and 9,136,512 page views a month from people just coming directly. Not through SEO, marketing, or anything like that… I just focus on the future instead of being reactive.

That’s how I win.

Now, the real question is, how are you going to win?

The post The One Thing Every Marketer Should Do appeared first on Neil Patel.

CEO and CFO of Expedia Resign After Failed Reorganization

Expedia Group, the online travel conglomerate that includes Orbitz, Vrbo, Hotwire and several other metasearch engines, announced this morning that CEO Mark Okerstrom and CFO Alan Pickerill have resigned. Their resignations come after a reorganization plan led by Okerstrom failed to bring results in the company’s third quarter. Expedia chairman Barry Diller will now oversee…