Take the Summer to Hit “Refresh”

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Aruna

I don’t know about you, but the summer sunshine and weather always encourage me to refresh.  I find myself making time for a longer stroll to work.  On some mornings, I even hit the snooze button three times instead of my usual two.  Work has not stopped, but the summer season seems to make my world more relaxed.

Summer is one of the best times for me to hit the “refresh” button.  I find myself creating moments for refreshment and reflection.  It can be difficult, at times.  There is so much going on with Ani Marketing Service each day, it seems like our team is constantly on the move.  But when I am purposeful about hitting my “refresh” button, I am able to use the extra moments for some reflection.  As a successful company, AMS spends a good portion of our time reflecting on our best practices for future implementation.  We created a hefty amount of strategies and protocols during the fall, winter and spring months with regard to social media and more.  Now is the time to think about what went well and what did not.  It is time to think about why things went well and why things did not.  Now is the time to hit refresh so that we can reflect.

This might seem like an obvious suggestion, but you would be surprised at how many people and companies fail to spend purposeful time reflecting.  Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”  While I think that your time reflecting should be spent in whatever space you choose, the sentiment remains the same.  During these breezy summer days, set aside 20-30 minutes a day to think about the experiences you or your company faced during the past few months.  You might be surprised to see what you discover in your thoughts!

Jordan Hardy, Marketing Consultant

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Ryland Angel Interview- Part 2

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Aruna
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The Ten Year Switch

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Aruna

I can’t believe our business is over ten years old!  We started in a tough 2001 economy and find ourselves in another difficult period now.  The good (and bad) news is that we are not alone.  And with more people looking for work, it’s easy to get lost in the fray.  Differentiation is critical,  but it is generally difficult when most organizations can sound the same.  Couple that with the increasing number of services that are offered over time, the choices for buyers can be overwhelming–they don’t even know where to start!

Guess what?  In times like these, we need to learn to reinvent ourselves, or put another way, give ourselves a fresh coat of paint. This is not to be confused with starting over.   This is when we look at our businesses — big or small, selling products or services — and re-evaluate our customers’ headaches and buzzwords. We then filter this new information and make sure that our new ‘paint’ reflects these market changes but is still aligned to our core competencies. Then we need to make clients aware that we not only understand but can help solve their problems, in a personal and financially-appealing way.

Ani Marketing Service helps clients reinvent themselves and we lead by example.  Therefore we will use our own discovery process as examples for three key phrases of reinvention:

Simply solve: Ani Marketing Service can make online social media meaningful with prospective buyers (quality) instead of algorithm-driven followers (quantity).  This impacts top line revenue.

Personal: Interesting material for postings must be written by an experienced person, in context of a client’s business strategy, in the appropriate voice of the online community, and across all appropriate digital platforms.  This engages industry-savvy buyers.

Financially appealing: Ani Marketing Service now offers 3 pricing packages for those 1) getting started, 2) getting better, and 3) getting to the top.  The packages are comprehensive and the prices are fair, encouraging everyone to use online social media in a meaningful and cost-effective way for their businesses.

Reinvention will jump start your business from surviving to growing.  Online social media is one type of marketing program to support that growth.  There are many others too.  If you are looking for a growth partner, it’s worth calling us.  It doesn’t cost anything, and who knows, you might actually find yourself inspired to try a fresh coat of paint.

Reinvent new combinations of what you already own. Improvise. Become more creative. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Evolution is the secret for the next step. ~Karl Lagerfeld~

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Save the Date: AMA’s Annual Marketing Conference

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Aruna

9/9/2013 - 9/11/2013
Sheraton New Orleans 500 Canal Street
New Orleans, LA 70130

SAVE THE DATE for the American Marketing Association’s Annual Marketing Conference – September 9th-11th at the New Orleans Sheraton!   This conference is the American Marketing Association’s event for the marketing community and a destination for the latest marketing thinking, analytics, innovations and interaction with the best marketing minds.   The depth of rich content and resources makes this conference relevant to marketers dealing with the challenges of today. Marketers and researchers will leave with having been challenged to think intentionally, more strategically and have the knowledge to impact their organization’s business results more positively.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND:   Marketers and researchers alike! The AMA’s Annual Marketing Conference attendees are mid-career to more experienced decision makers – managers and directors – marketing professionals that represent a wide spectrum of cross-vertical industries.

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The Importance of Authenticity

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Aruna

This past month, our founder and president, Aruna, asked the AMS team to draft some of the lessons that we have learned about our social media efforts this past year.  I have played a key role in marking our social territory, so I immediately began reflecting.  One of the first things that I have concluded in doing this work is that it is hard, but it is important to be authentic.  Social media, on any platform, is time consuming and it takes thought.  I have written many blog posts about a variety of social media sites, that all revolve around the same concept: the production of authentic content.

Authentic content, in the social media world, is the Holy Grail.  It not only makes a company relevant, it sets a company apart.  There are about a million robots out there that tweet endlessly, day and night.  People might follow them, friend them, or re-pin them, but they do not engage with a robot.  People engage with people who represent a company that consistently innovates and puts out new or interesting thoughts into the social media stream.

Given our diverse skillset at AMS, it has been, at times, difficult to narrow the focus for the benefit of our social media audience.  We do a lot of different things in any given day, and figuring out what to provide to our audience can sometimes be overwhelming.  Our biggest takeaway this month is to maintain authenticity.  That directive might seem unclear at first, but it really is simple.  Part of what intrigues a consumer base is the authenticity of an organization.  People want to know about the inner-workings of the team.  Even this blog post gives you a little insight into how our team operates.  By providing a window into that process through social media, you can create the space for meaningful engagement.
Be sure to watch our team develop the authenticity of our brand as we continue to evolve across our social media platforms.  Check out our sites here— Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn—and tell us what you think!
Jordan Hardy, Marketing Consultant

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Going for “the ask”

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Aruna

I heard an interesting story from a client who recently retired as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.  He was very close to his long-time friend and neighbor, who was also retired and the founder of a prominent recruiting firm.  The two of them were having coffee and happened upon a sensitive topic:  they had never done business together.  Turns out that each was waiting for the other one to bring it up, because they valued each other professionally and wanted to work together, but they were anxious that the other one didn’t think the same thing.  These friends shared a chuckle over this important lesson and then passed it on to us:  don’t be afraid to go for “the ask”.

Now granted, you can only go for “the ask” if a number of the right things are  in place:

1) The quality of the offering
2) The type of situation
3) The appropriateness of the request
4) The depth of the relationship
5) The timing of “the ask”

These are items that are instinctive to a good salesperson.

How do we know this?  Well the job of a good marketer is to make the sales person’s job easier, which means the relationship between sales and marketing is complementary not contentious.  Those kinds of environments with a symbiotic sales-marketing relationship are where Ani Marketing Service (AMS) has the most success.  We provide content, collateral, and communications to support business development efforts, which produce leads to help the sales team  grow revenues.  Ask our clients like SNAPcomputing (www.SNAPcomputing.net), Holtzman Communications, (http://www.holtzmancom.com/ ), and Kitchen Opera Company (www.KitchenOperaCompany.com).  They have all benefitted from similar AMS marketing campaigns.

If you have some revenue-generating ideas you’d like to discuss, please reach out to  us.  You’ll never know how we can help unless you go for “the ask.”

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

~Mark Twain~

 

 

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A Successful Marketing Strategy for Ryland Angel

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Aruna

 

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Marketing & Public Policy Conference 2013

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Aruna

May 30 – June 1, 2013
Washington, D.C.
For more information click here.

The Marketing and Public Policy Conference (MPPC) is the premier national and international event for marketing academics, public policy makers, and marketing practitioners interested in social and public policy. The conference venue is in the heart of downtown Washington D.C. and offers superb access to important historical and cultural sites as well as a spectrum of dining and entertainment options.

Keynote Presentation from Commissioner Maureen K. Ohlhausen
Commissioner Ohlhausen was appointed to the FTC in 2012. Prior to joining the Commission, Ohlhausen was a partner at Wilkinson Barker Knauer, LLP following nearly ten years working in a variety of roles at the FTC. Ohlhausen was on the adjunct faculty at George Mason University School of Law. She served as a Senior Editor of the Antitrust Law Journal and a member of the American Bar Association Task Force on Competition & Public Policy.

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The Power of Pinterest

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Aruna

The past couple of blogs that we have featured have centered on our foray into the wide and dynamic social media world.  This month, my focus is Pinterest.  Let me begin by saying, Pinterest is one of my favorite websites to use—especially in my free time.
When I sat down with the AMS (Ani Marketing Service) team, they challenged me to discover the unique marketing tricks of Pinterest.  I was immediately excited and invested.  Before we dive into the strategies that work, let’s get a little background first.  Pinterest hit the social media scene in 2010, and became a relevant force by mid-2011.  By creating a space where users could “pin” pictures of things they found and liked across the internet, the creators of Pinterest established a virtual goldmine.

Pinners using the website can organize their many “pins” onto different “boards.”  On my personal Pinterest page, I have a board that I’ve titled, “I’ll Take the Whole Menu,” where I solely pin pictures of recipes and food.  When you click on the picture of the recipe, you are taken to the website where that picture originated.

Best of all, when I pin anything to my boards, it appears on the homepage of any of the people that follow me.  It is very similar to the newsfeed from Facebook—people can see my activity.  If they like what I have pinned, they can “repin” it, and repinning is where Pinterest becomes a viral resource.  Pinterest has a few privacy settings that you can utilize, but for the most part, it is much more public than any other social media website.  As my friends repin pictures from my boards and vice versa, it is shared with their followers and my own.  Repinning continues and continues until people that I have never met are sharing pictures of things that I liked because they liked it too.

So how do you find a marketing strategy in that?  You begin by fully understanding the kind of company you want to be.  I ventured into Pinterest to better support our work with a fashion-based client.  With that in mind, my work on Pinterest would need to promote the lifestyle that we are selling with this company.  The client is based in New York City and has all the flair and hipster edge of your average New Yorker hailing a taxi in Chelsea.  With a few images of inspiration in my head, I set about creating our boards.

The most important boards that I arranged featured the actual product.  This client has several lines within its brand.  The names of each line serve as perfect titles for boards.  On each board, I provide several different shots of the product, along with people wearing that product.  But on Pinterest, showing your product is not enough.  You need to breathe relevant life into your page.  I created other boards to really build and develop the image of the client.

As I pinned, others repinned, and I really began to see the nature of the community that I was creating for this client.  Pinterest truly is a new world, and it is wholly different from other websites that we use to connect.  I encourage you to get on, if not for your company, then for yourself.  If you’re looking for even more tips to join the pinning movement, check out Pinfluence by Beth Hayden.

Jordan Hardy, Marketing Consultant

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The Importance of Clear Executive Summaries

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Aruna

Pssst… Pass this along

In the past week, I’ve discussed strategies with three start up companies that need new or revised executive summaries.  One is a language company, which has an excellent product description.  Another is a social media “app” that does a great job of explaining the user experience. The last is an online health program, with a compelling description of its market need.  What each company is missing is a clear explanation of a customer problem and a succinct description of the unique advantages of its solution.

Easy enough to do?  Of course it is, but you would be surprised by the amount of marketing collateral that is missing this kind of opening statement.

Have a look at your promotional material.  Is the following obvious and consistently addressed?

- Who is going to read it?
- What problem(s) does this target audience have?
- How are you going to address your buyers’ needs in a clear, compelling, unique way?
i.e., What are your solutions and why are they the most effective?
- What is the call-to-action?

We know you know the answers to these questions.  The real issue is: can you put your answers together in such a way to  effectively communicate it to your buyers?  Most of our clients answer, “no”,  because they know too much and are challenged with how to select their salient points and how to best express them.  That’s why they hire us:  we know how to distill information “just enough”.

If you think you might “know too much”, or if you are interested in learning more about these interesting startups, let us know.  We’re here to help you move forward.

“The very first company I started failed with a great bang. The second one failed a little bit less, but still failed. The third one, you know, proper failed, but it was kind of okay. I recovered quickly. Number four almost didn’t fail. It still didn’t really feel great, but it did okay. Number five was PayPal.”
– Max Levchin (former CTO of PayPal)

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