In the immortal words of The Who, "Who are you (oooh oooh, oooh oooh)?"
Yeah, we really wanna know. And you should, too. Knowing who you are is the basis of your brand, and it's also the first step in communicating something your prospects actually want to hear.
You: C'mon, Ashby Dillon, do you honestly expect me to believe someone is going to say "I hired you to handle my intellectual property case because your logo is so sweet"?
Us: HECK NO!
Furthermore, we understand that investing in your brand and your image can be a tough pill to swallow because there is no measureable return on the investment. And yet….your brand is absolutely crucial. Here's why. If you're selling a service, such as accounting, legal, or consulting services, your product is invisible. In marketing, when a product is invisible, the package IS the product.
If you're selling a product, it seems logical to assume that your prospect will evaluate its features, benefits, and price—as well as your experience and track record. But people don't always use logic when making purchasing decisions. Intangibles like emotion and perception will play a part in their decision to purchase from you—or not. And that's why your image, your brand, is so important.
| Successful branding |  |
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| …creates | ||
| perceptions and opinions | |
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| …which influence | ||
| purchasing behaviors | |
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| …that lead to sales. |
In short, your brand tells a story that will resonate with your target audiences and stakeholders and differentiate you from your competitors.
Ashby Dillon can help you tell that story:
- Brand Audit & Discovery: Thoughtful, thorough, and rigorous research will help us frame internal and external perceptions of your company so that we can create the most advantageous brand positioning.
- Brand Development: Your brand comes to life with key messaging, taglines, positioning statements, logos, and icons. We'll also select the colors, type and images to help you tell your brand story accurately and effectively.
- Brand Execution: We'll work with you to develop a strategy for communicating your new brand to the marketplace and provide you with the guidelines and tools your marketing department needs to deploy consistently and coherently.
Social media, e-mail marketing, digital advertising, retargeting. There are more tools than ever to help you get your message out to your target audience. But what's the best way to do so? How should you schedule and plan your marketing activities for the next 12 months? Are you effectively maximizing your marketing budget? What activities make most sense for you to do in-house? What should you outsource to a marketing firm like Ashby Dillon?
Look, these days we know Marketing Managers and Directors are under enormous pressure to do as much as possible with very limited resources. We'd like to be one of those resources, a trusted advisor that focuses more on your success than on billable hours.
It all starts with a good plan from Ashby Dillon. We can help you with:
- Identification of marketing goals and objectives
- Audience segmentation (based on needs, behaviors, geography, etc.) and data mining
- Methods of communication
- Development of messages for each stage of the buying funnel
- Scheduling marketing activities for a 6, 12, or 18 month period of time
- Media recommendations, including outlets, necessary reach, and ideal frequency
- Coordination of follow-through with sales, customer service etc.
Ads are annoying, right? They're pushy and intrusive, and not always relevant. They interrupt you when you watch SNL reruns online. They tap you on the shoulder while you read an article about retirement planning. They chew with their mouths open while you listen to a podcast about new machine tool programming techniques. The average person is assaulted by so many marketing messages in a given day that they collectively lose their effectiveness.
What if your prospective customer found you, instead of the other way around? Instead of interrupting someone when they're listening to a podcast, why not host the podcast yourself?
We hate buzzwords almost as much as we hate nautical terms around here—I mean really, add water and suddenly "front" and "back" don't apply?—but if you insist on having one, here it is: inbound marketing.
Inbound or content marketing is a way for you to "get found" by your customers by
Ashby Dillon can help you put out the kind of content that earns your customers' interest and brings THEM to YOU.
If you're a B2C marketer, the goal of your SEM or PPC program is simply to make a sale. Let's say you sell stuffed Rikki Tikki Tavi dolls on your website, which is pretty creepy but also pretty straightforward. Your ads on mongoose and Kipling-themed fan sites drive people to your e-commerce site where they can buy something that will terrify their children, as well as their children's children, for generations to come. Easy.
But if you're a B2B marketer, the goal is to capture a lead, not make a sale. This means you have to focus as much on converting clicks into leads as you do on generating traffic to your website. But getting people to invest the time and energy it takes to share their contact information with you isn't always easy. They have to feel that it's worth the risk to open themselves up to a barrage of potentially unwanted communications from you. Your job is to make it worth their while.
Tell us if any of these sounds familiar:
- You're placing online ads and have a PPC program but aren't getting any clicks.
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You ARE getting clicks, but not leads (or conversions). - You're getting leads, but not the right kind of leads.
Ashby Dillon can help you establish or optimize an existing lead generation program with proven tactics and technology.
Free? Check. Easy? Check. The be-all, end-all for marketers? Not even close, especially if you're a B2B marketer.*
If you're a smart B2B marketer, and we know you are or you wouldn't be reading this, you think about fitting social media into your marketing plan and wonder:
- What do I need to know about this stuff?
- What's it going to GET me?
- What do I blog about/tweet about/write on my Facebook page?
Do I need to spend valuable marketing dollars on this?- How much staff time will this require?
There are a lot of marketing agencies and consultants out there making all kinds of claims about the power of social media. This may surprise you, but our advice to you is this: be skeptical.
It's still about strategy.
While traditional advertising is typically a one-way communication, social media is, at its most successful, a 2-way exchange between the brand and the customer. B2C marketers use social media to inspire lively interaction between the brand and the consumer that results in dialogue and sharing…NOT SELLING. B2B brands can also use social media to humanize their brands, build awareness, inspire loyalty, and interact with customers—but jumping into it without a careful plan that ties your efforts back to business objectives can be a costly mistake. In fact, if done incorrectly, it can end up costing you more in time, expense, and even brand equity.
Our social media strategy services include:
- Selecting appropriate social media outlets
- Setting clear objectives and identifying success metrics (increasing your e-mail list, # of likes, # of positive interactions, etc.)
- Developing strategies, as well as tactical campaigns and promotions to accomplish your objectives
- Measuring results
Ashby Dillon can help you navigate the world of social media with a solid strategy for success, whether you need to establish a presence or refine your existing presence.
*Consider this. Victoria's Secret's 2010 sales totaled $5.9 billion and their Facebook page has 15,714,060** likes. Cisco's 2010 sales totaled over $40 billion in 2010, but their Facebook page has a mere 229,343** Likes. Kind of puts it in perspective, doesn't it?
** Accurate as of November 2011.
Maybe you're launching a new product. Or entering a new market. Heck, maybe you're changing your company name. Regardless, there are certain situations where it makes sense to engage in some due-diligence market research to gather information about competitors, market size, and customer needs. You may also need qualitative and/or quantitative opinion-based marketing research to validate (or contradict) your marketing strategy, product branding, or corporate identity.
Ashby Dillon can help you gather and interpret the information you need to make an informed decision.
- Focus groups
- Surveys (design and deployment)
- Competitive intelligence
- Website usability
Occasionally, we work in partnership with NSRC and other research firms who have specialized expertise in areas such as focus group screening and moderation, choice modeling, and firmographics.
