Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show, we explore the California Consumer Privacy Act and what processes and technology all businesses need to have in place […]
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show, we explore the California Consumer Privacy Act and what processes and technology all businesses need to have in place […]
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.
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.
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.
When I start a job search, a huge factor that notates whether or not I send in an application is a company culture I can see myself contributing to and thriving in. I am totally one of the candidates who won’t apply to a company with a negative reputation.
Companies are defined by the values and protocol set in place. This is what a company culture is. They describe how company beliefs are reflected in the experience of employees and customers.
HubSpot’s culture code is available online as a commitment to our value of transparency. Other companies (Spotify, Hootsuite, Asana) with transparency as a part of their culture have done the same, showing that culture works in implementation, not just establishment.
If you’re looking for inspiration for your company culture or are working to define one of your own, check out what these companies are doing to make their employees and customers receive a positive experience.
1. Google
At Google, the spark of ideas is key. Employees, affectionately dubbed ‘Googlers,’ are encouraged to be creative. Innovation is a big company goal, and because of this, Google has the X lab.
This is a lab space where employees can experiment and failure is accepted as a learning experience necessary for growth. Without this fear of doing something wrong, employees can feel empowered to strive for higher goals and feel supported along the way.
Googlers can enjoy the flexibility of choosing how they work and offices with video games and nap areas. Common spaces like kitchenettes and various meeting rooms bring employees together and encourage productivity with in-office food options and breakout spaces.
A unique feature of Google’s culture is the program ‘Googler to Googler.’ This is focused on team development and working together; Googlers get the chance to educate each other in skill-building from yoga to team management.
2. Netflix
Netflix is another company where culture immersion starts during the interview process — candidates who make a splash display empathy and a track record of working well in teams. Candidates who have great achievements but negative attitudes might be passed over for one enthusiastic about joining a new team who is seen as a natural fit.
Ownership through flexibility is also important to the streaming service. Providing employees with unlimited vacation time is a way Netflix encourages not only a flexible work schedule but sets in place the expectation that unique perks will be respected.
Another quirk about Netflix’s culture is its extreme honesty policy. To prioritize respect in the workplace, the company believes that if you wouldn’t say something to a colleague in person, you shouldn’t say it in private. This builds trust in work relationships, for example, those with coworkers and managers.
3. Amazon
The biggest focus at Amazon, in terms of company culture, is producing an excellent experience for the customer. To achieve this, Amazon imposes high standards into everything culture-based. What do I mean by this?
Employees are encouraged to deliver their best performance. To aide with this, Amazon has a “two-pizza” rule: Teams should be small enough to be fed with two pizzas. This approach helps managers create a more personal relationship with their team, provide adequate support, and maintains company productivity.
Further, the high expectations from customers influence the drive from employees to build high-quality experiences. What’s more, this approach attracts potential employees who see themselves in the company’s brand and want to deliver the best service possible to customers.
4. Buffer
At Buffer, culture is made up of personal development, humility, listening, and transparency. The company has a policy of providing honesty to their employees and customers and encourages them to do the same. Buffer also promotes employee skill-building and a supportive environment for innovation.
Buffer employees can expect a culture that is huge on transparency, from employee salaries being posted on their website to encouraging open employee/manager relationships. The company is also huge on being gratuitous. Valuing positive collaboration and hard work solidifies a workforce where employees feel valued.
Though self-improvement isn’t a culture aspect unique to Buffer, it’s a huge part of it. Buffer believes prime employees don’t throw themselves into work. Instead, they believe the best employees balance a healthy workload with their drive to improve their skill sets in and outside of work. This could be personal goals, like fitness, or professional goals, like team management.
Buffer has a commitment to listening to their employees to provide the best work atmosphere possible, promoting the practice of listening to understand rather respond. Similarly, they put the same emphasis on listening to providing a positive customer experience.
5. Zappos
Have you heard the story of the Zappos employee who spent 10 hours on the phone with a customer? This is an outcome of the culture Zappos has put in place for their company. From the interview process to day-to-day functions, the company is devoted to like-minded employees driven by customer experience.
At Zappos, immersion into the culture starts the moment candidates are picked up from the airport for their in-person interview. Future Zapponians are the ones who have high marks from social interactions. From the driver to the interviewer, almost every interaction a potential employee has is evaluated for personality.
Another unique part of the culture at Zappos has to do with accepting an offer. New employees work at the company for a month, of which a week is spent (no matter the role) in the call center. At the end of the month, the new hire can either accept their offer and continue their role or walk away from the role with $3,000 for their time and no further questions, helpful towards employee retention.
Zappos values the ideas of their employees, supporting a culture that fosters thought leadership and a positive environment to work in. This means flexible dress codes, hours, and the encouragement to share ideas among supervisors and employees.
When implementing or redefining a company culture, choose the one that your company can follow from day one. For example, most companies cannot provide an office ping-pong table at launch. But, a startup can implement a promise to employees that their health is of high priority to increase productivity, and encourage team runs or yoga classes from day one.
Keep in mind that no culture is perfect, even the above examples. Some of them have addressed fault and divides in their company cultures. Make sure that above all else, you listen to your employees and take their ideas into account.
The biggest perks in investing in a company code are seeing the retention of employees and happy customer experiences. A culture that focuses too much on glitz and glamour may lose sight in what’s really important to their beliefs, so make sure that yours is reasonable, yet effective.
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 look at how the 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 this case… cows, bears, deer, snakes, mountain lions, and more. 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.
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.
Nonetheless, 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 on its head 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?
When you search Google for any query 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 audience, 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?
At AWeber, we’re always working to deliver powerfully-simple features for you. Our goal: to remove the complexity of email marketing so you can concentrate on making your business more awesome.
The 3-minute video below introduces you to the latest AWeber features that simplify how you send emails to your prospects and customers.
You’ll learn about Smart Designer, a free, intelligent design assistant that lets you automatically create an amazing-looking, branded email template in seconds. You’ll also see how Team Hub enables multiple users to collaborate around a single account. And you’ll discover all the ways we’re innovating our easy-to-use, industry-leading drag & drop email builder.
Click below to watch the video!
More exciting updates from AWeber!
In addition to the features in the video above, we’re also excited to announce that we’ve added the following updates to our platform:
AWeber’s Wordpress plugin was just completely revamped to make it even easier to grow your email list quickly.
Broadcast stats have gotten a visual refresh to make it easier to understand who is opening and clicking your emails.
The default email template in the drag-and-drop editor has been updated with some new, modern styles that render beautifully on all devices.
The tag dashboard now gives you a complete view of your tags, so you can better segment your audience and automate your emails.
The campaigns list page lets you now easily see how many people have received each of the messages in an automated email series.
We hope you’re as excited as we are about these amazing new features. Go test them out and let us know what you think! Log in to your account now.
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 look at how the 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 this case… cows, bears, deer, snakes, mountain lions, and more. 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.
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.
Nonetheless, 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 on its head 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?
When you search Google for any query 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 audience, 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?
When I start a job search, a huge factor that notates whether or not I send in an application is a company culture I can see myself contributing to and thriving in. I am totally one of the candidates who won’t apply to a company with a negative reputation.
Companies are defined by the values and protocol set in place. This is what a company culture is. They describe how company beliefs are reflected in the experience of employees and customers.
HubSpot’s culture code is available online as a commitment to our value of transparency. Other companies (Spotify, Hootsuite, Asana) with transparency as a part of their culture have done the same, showing that culture works in implementation, not just establishment.
If you’re looking for inspiration for your company culture or are working to define one of your own, check out what these companies are doing to make their employees and customers receive a positive experience.
1. Google
At Google, the spark of ideas is key. Employees, affectionately dubbed ‘Googlers,’ are encouraged to be creative. Innovation is a big company goal, and because of this, Google has the X lab.
This is a lab space where employees can experiment and failure is accepted as a learning experience necessary for growth. Without this fear of doing something wrong, employees can feel empowered to strive for higher goals and feel supported along the way.
Googlers can enjoy the flexibility of choosing how they work and offices with video games and nap areas. Common spaces like kitchenettes and various meeting rooms bring employees together and encourage productivity with in-office food options and breakout spaces.
A unique feature of Google’s culture is the program ‘Googler to Googler.’ This is focused on team development and working together; Googlers get the chance to educate each other in skill-building from yoga to team management.
2. Netflix
Netflix is another company where culture immersion starts during the interview process — candidates who make a splash display empathy and a track record of working well in teams. Candidates who have great achievements but negative attitudes might be passed over for one enthusiastic about joining a new team who is seen as a natural fit.
Ownership through flexibility is also important to the streaming service. Providing employees with unlimited vacation time is a way Netflix encourages not only a flexible work schedule but sets in place the expectation that unique perks will be respected.
Another quirk about Netflix’s culture is its extreme honesty policy. To prioritize respect in the workplace, the company believes that if you wouldn’t say something to a colleague in person, you shouldn’t say it in private. This builds trust in work relationships, for example, those with coworkers and managers.
3. Amazon
The biggest focus at Amazon, in terms of company culture, is producing an excellent experience for the customer. To achieve this, Amazon imposes high standards into everything culture-based. What do I mean by this?
Employees are encouraged to deliver their best performance. To aide with this, Amazon has a “two-pizza” rule: Teams should be small enough to be fed with two pizzas. This approach helps managers create a more personal relationship with their team, provide adequate support, and maintains company productivity.
Further, the high expectations from customers influence the drive from employees to build high-quality experiences. What’s more, this approach attracts potential employees who see themselves in the company’s brand and want to deliver the best service possible to customers.
4. Buffer
At Buffer, culture is made up of personal development, humility, listening, and transparency. The company has a policy of providing honesty to their employees and customers and encourages them to do the same. Buffer also promotes employee skill-building and a supportive environment for innovation.
Buffer employees can expect a culture that is huge on transparency, from employee salaries being posted on their website to encouraging open employee/manager relationships. The company is also huge on being gratuitous. Valuing positive collaboration and hard work solidifies a workforce where employees feel valued.
Though self-improvement isn’t a culture aspect unique to Buffer, it’s a huge part of it. Buffer believes prime employees don’t throw themselves into work. Instead, they believe the best employees balance a healthy workload with their drive to improve their skill sets in and outside of work. This could be personal goals, like fitness, or professional goals, like team management.
Buffer has a commitment to listening to their employees to provide the best work atmosphere possible, promoting the practice of listening to understand rather respond. Similarly, they put the same emphasis on listening to providing a positive customer experience.
5. Zappos
Have you heard the story of the Zappos employee who spent 10 hours on the phone with a customer? This is an outcome of the culture Zappos has put in place for their company. From the interview process to day-to-day functions, the company is devoted to like-minded employees driven by customer experience.
At Zappos, immersion into the culture starts the moment candidates are picked up from the airport for their in-person interview. Future Zapponians are the ones who have high marks from social interactions. From the driver to the interviewer, almost every interaction a potential employee has is evaluated for personality.
Another unique part of the culture at Zappos has to do with accepting an offer. New employees work at the company for a month, of which a week is spent (no matter the role) in the call center. At the end of the month, the new hire can either accept their offer and continue their role or walk away from the role with $3,000 for their time and no further questions, helpful towards employee retention.
Zappos values the ideas of their employees, supporting a culture that fosters thought leadership and a positive environment to work in. This means flexible dress codes, hours, and the encouragement to share ideas among supervisors and employees.
When implementing or redefining a company culture, choose the one that your company can follow from day one. For example, most companies cannot provide an office ping-pong table at launch. But, a startup can implement a promise to employees that their health is of high priority to increase productivity, and encourage team runs or yoga classes from day one.
Keep in mind that no culture is perfect, even the above examples. Some of them have addressed fault and divides in their company cultures. Make sure that above all else, you listen to your employees and take their ideas into account.
The biggest perks in investing in a company code are seeing the retention of employees and happy customer experiences. A culture that focuses too much on glitz and glamour may lose sight in what’s really important to their beliefs, so make sure that yours is reasonable, yet effective.
