Many brands are looking for the next best way to better engage their audience. And with so many companies doing the bulk of their business online these days, the customer experience has become a whole new thing. It’s no longer about a pleasant smile and matching the atmosphere and feel of your brand (although those remain important).

If you really want to enhance the brand experience for your customers and make sure your brand will always stick with them, there are a few approaches you can take. This applies to the online and offline experiences.

To stretch your efforts at improving your brand experience, keep these things in mind.

1. Online retailers have totally redefined the purchase experience. If you want your brand to supply a great user experience for your customers, you have to be able to at least try to match some of the more popular retail options, Think of how Amazon is now offering their customers a guaranteed two days hipping option as well as a return policy that always seems to work in the customers’ favor. You need to be prepared to offer your customers a simple means of purchase, especially in online environments.
2. All of your employees need to be on the same page. Some businesses even implement a form of “brand training” for their employees. This builds a common view of what your brand is about and also serves to get your entire workforce fired up about your brand’s appearance and message.
3. Remain consistent in your online and offline appearance. Your customers should be able to expect the same thing in your physical store that they are used to seeing on your website or social media platforms. This eliminates brand confusion and helps to cement your brand, making it easier for people to generate a word-of-mouth buzz around your brand.

What are some other ways your brand has been able to enhance the brand experience for your customers. Do you think these types of improvements are easier online or off?

Businesses look into brand extensions for any number of reasons. Sometimes they feel like they need to reach a larger audience. Sometimes if just feels that there is a natural extension of goods and services that are created naturally.

Whatever the reason for a brand extension, it can be a great way for a business to meet new needs and grow. If you think you might be ready to take your first venture into an extension for your brand, but aren’t quite sure if your extension idea is worth pursuing, ask yourself the following questions.

• Will the extension make it easier for customers to enjoy your brand? Will they be able to experience it in different places or through different media?
• Is the extension essentially offering a specific area of your expertise in a wider and more prominent way? This can be great, as it shows your audience the breadth of your expertise.
• Does it allow your customers and target audience a new way to use or experience your brand? This is similar to point one, but different in that it encompasses all aspects of audience interaction and not simply the view and/or purchase phase.
• Does the extension provide potential customers a free glimpse or a “taste test” of your product?
• Does it alter certain aspects of your brand just enough to draw interest from the public without causing you to later your overall brand’s message or identity?

Keep in mind that brand extension is not for everyone. Some brands simply aren’t ready for the work or, quite frankly, aren’t really capable of pulling off a brand extension. Some brand extensions can be minor (think Oreo cookies coloring their cream orange during Halloween) or quite large (think Virgin and their shift from music to…well, just about everything).

However, if you can tackle these questions with confidence and your idea for brand extension seems stronger with each question, maybe it’s time to get the ball rolling.

We spend so much time trying to define ourselves clearly to our customers that we often overlook one of the most important messages at our disposal—what our brands are not about.

Let’s envision what most people would likely consider their dream workplace to get an example of what we’re talking about.

Let’s say we want our customers to see us a care free yet highly creative and willing to try new things. We are not at all incompetent, but we also aren’t going to let our working lives be defined and restricted by overly politicized rules and the usual office restrictions.

How might we get across to our customers that we are not about this?

• First, let’s throw the dress code out of the window. In summer, allow flip flops and shorts.
• Encourage outside-the-box thinking.
• Go with huge open spaces. Don’t even think about using cubicles.
• Get trendy with social media and have fun with it. Translate this some sort of fun into your website.

Of course, these are a few easy ways to get across your point.

More to the point, if you want to show customers what your brand is not about, you can do so in advertising. Find a competitor within your industry that you know you are total opposites with. Find a few things that they are doing that you don’t agree with—customer service practices, marketing strategies, even right down to atmosphere—and find ways that your brand steps away from these approaches to improve the customer experience.

Always remember that is simple to explain what your brand is about. But if you can go one step further and tell your customers what your brand is not about what you don’t symbolize or stand for, you have one up on your competitors. And if you can use this as strength, you have the capacity to open up marketing channels that others can only hope to.

What about you and your brand? What are some things that you simply don’t represent and, more importantly, can say it proudly?

We all know what Netflix is. The brand has basically become a household word and is making it more convenient than ever for people to watch their favorite shows (and, to some extent, movies) at home for a very affordable fee. Netlfix is changing the way people watch television.

However, their mega-success can’t cover up one of their few mistakes—because it was a pretty monumental failure.

Remember Qwikster? If not, it’s understandable. It didn’t last long.

Qwikster was a 2011 gamble by Netflix, thinking that digital streaming would be even more convenient for their customers. Rather than waiting on their mail order DVDs, customers would use Qwikster to instantly stream their shows or movies.

But what they didn’t expect was how complicated it made their previously cut and dry business model. By splitting the company in such a way, there was a bit if customer alien nation and the press on this model was largely negative.

Oh, and it didn’t help that existing Netflix customers saw a 60% rise in their monthly fee if they wanted both services. No existing clients were grandfathered into the newer price structure. There was confusion and frustration everywhere—and it all came back to Netflix trying to make their brand better.

But they didn’t anticipate their audience’s needs. Rather than simplifying life and making things easier, they pissed off a lot of the loyal members that had helped them get to where they were.

In the end, according to sources such as CNET, Netflix lost more than 800,000 subscribers due to this fiasco. The stock in Netflix also dropped more at an estimated 77%.

Obviously, Netflix was able to recover, but the Qwikster debacle will forever haunt them. It just goes to show that even big name companies are immune to branding miscues.

So what can your brand take away from this? How can we learn from this grand mistake from such a popular company?

In today’s super busy mobile marketing environment, we often get too focused on the quick fix and instant gratification. And while there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, we also need to remember what some of the most powerful marketing tools have always been.

While content marketing might not be as popular as it once was, it tends to have more oomph to it than the quick-fix marketing that is currently taking most of us by storm.

So don’t give up on what works. Dance with the one that brought you to the party. (Insert your own overused metaphor here).

If you have a good copywriter on hand, content marketing can be extremely effective. Here are a few ways you can use content marketing to entice your audience and turn a profit.

• Do you have a blog? If not, fix that now and then come back to this article in a few months. And if you do (yay for you), revisit it and pull out the 25 most popular entries. Create an e-book with those entries and sell them for super cheap (think $1). Yu can also offer it as a free download on your site.
• Seek out other in your industry and offer to write guest posts for their site. This is a great way to build traffic and to show other how knowledgeable you are about the industry.
• Go old school…write up a direct mailing piece that will go only to your existing customers. Don’t be salesy. Just thank them for their patronage and let them know that you hope to be able to continue to work with them in the future. It’s also a good idea to offer some sort of coupon or freebie to go with this.
• Come up with an idea for a blog series. Try to make it a 5-part series so you can post one every day. Promote it for a few weeks before actually posting them to try to build some momentum and interest. If it does well, invite others to do the same with guest posts on your site; this can drive their existing traffic to your site and possibly net you a few future clients.

What are some ways you are still using effective content marketing? Do you see it as something that will eventually due out or as a tool that’s just as useful today as it ever was?

A lot of people that are marginally new to Facebook will no doubt make the classic Facebook first-timers mistake. That is, of course, creating an account and blindly posting updates that have no relevance to their audience. Or, worse than that, not updating regularly at all.

Those that are guilty of this are clearly not understanding the tools that Facebook has to offer. It’s not enough to simply have a Facebook presence—you have to master it. You have to own your Facebook (and all other social media, actually) presence.

On way you can do that is to utilize the targeting function. If you’re struggling with getting people to “like” your page, you really do need to check out all of the targeting options that are available.

Why look into targeted ads of Facebook? Yeah, they cost some cash (and actually not that much, by the way), but the benefits can be enormous.

• You always know that your ad is reaching the people that have targeted; the guesswork is removed completely.
• Facebook ads make it super simple for people to connect to any space you want—your Facebook page, your website, an online store or anything else at all.
• You can get incredibly specific. If you only want your ad to reach stay at home dads that live in Spokane, Washington, you can do that.

Best of all, you have complete control over the payment options as well. You can choose from a Pay per Click option and a Pay per Impression option. And you can also base it on a pre-determined daily budget.

And when you can get well accustomed to the way these ads work, you can really start playing them heavily to your advantage. Before you know it, you’ll have more followers and more inquiries about your business.

But you have to stay consistent and learn to sue Facebook as a tool and not just a prop for your business.

Once October begins, many small businesses are gearing up for the downhill slide…holidays, vacations, and festive cheer all over the place! It can be a very busy time for marketing and advertising.

Some will sink a good amount of money into fall marketing but others have figured out a more rapid and affordable way to advertise. It should come as no surprise that social media is involved and still not surprise that Facebook is at the center of it all.

Nearly every business is using Facebook to get the word about sales, promotions and special deals. This is because the message is guaranteed to get in front of people. Posting to Facebook is just about as direct of a marketing approach as you can get.

So what can you do to make sure you’re marketing on Facebook properly in preparation for the fall season? Try a few of these suggestions:

• Study your Facebook feed to see what your most successful post days and times are. Schedule any announcements to coincide with these times.
• If you’re going to be posting about Christmas promotions, start subtly mentioning it as early as late September (yes, you should be planning this far ahead). Ramp it up in late October and go full-on blitz after Thanksgiving.
• Offer exclusive holiday discounts for your followers.
• Get your followers in on the action by asking them questions about their holiday rituals. This is a great way to engage your followers and become more relatable.
• Stay festive. Post pictures of your office decorated for the holidays. Something as simple as pictures from your daily commute with fall colors everywhere can be effective. Again, this is a nice way for your audience to relate to you.

How about you? What are some ways you have been able to successfully market your business in the last part of the year?

We’ve all had a bad job interview at some point. Some of us can probably even go so far as to say that we’ve had some weird job interviews. Actually, weird job interviews are getting more common.

Depending on the kind of company you have applied for a job with, the questions asked during an interview can sometimes seem pretty strange. A very popular one is “What do you think is your biggest weakness?” This is an obvious question as it puts your honesty on display. And it also causes you to think fast and try to sell a weakness as an actual strength (yes, that’s really what they’re looking for when they ask you this question).

But if you think that’s a question that is served out of left field, you should see some of the really oddball questions that people have reported from a job interview. The following examples are taken from Snagajob.com

• “If you were a breakfast cereal, what would you be and why?”
• “How would you explain what a chair is to an alien?”
• “If you could be a plant, what plant would you be?”
• “If you had to make a shoe with anything in this room, how would you make it?”
• “How would you explain Facebook to your grandma?”
• “Do you think there is any hope for mankind?”
• “If you were a fruit, what fruit would you be?”

No, these aren’t questions that are thrown out there just to trip you up. There is actually some clever design behind them.  Most of the time, it’s to gauge your response to the unexpected. There’s also the desire to see how quickly you can think on your feet.

Also, think about it…no matter what answer you give to any of those questions, your immediate answer isn’t the important thing. It’s the follow up question of “Why?” So why would you be a box of Fruit Loops? Because you follow your nose? Because you, too, are just a bowl of fruity fun?

All of that yo say, in a job interview, you should take every question seriously. You never know what the real reason behind a question might be.

We’ve all had that feeling…that Next Great Marketing Idea has just struck you and it’s time to go ahead with it while the going’s good! No since in wasting time, right?

Well…slow down there, buster.

Take that idea, sit it down in your office and nurture it. Jumping overboard without a raft can be dangerous. You need to plan properly before kicking off a marketing campaign. As a matter of fact, there are a few things you should be absolutely clear on before you do the first bit of marketing.

Without having your marketing strategy established, you can really screw up finances, planning, and alienate your audience.

What are the (often expensive dangers) of kicking off a marketing plan without any definite objective in mind? Well, here are two things you should not invest much time until you have a marketing strategy set in place.

Your printed collateral materials will go to waste. All of those pretty brochures and business cards and whatever else you had printed up in your excitement to start a business have to pretty much be linked or whatever marketing you do. If you print all of this up before you have a marketing plan in mind, you are basically making limitations for that marketing, as it needs to be synchronous with any printed media you’ve released.

Your website will need expensive re-designs: These can get expensive. But if you build it after you have set your marketing strategy, there are so many tools you can implement on your site to work towards your marketing. And with social media set in place to help push your marketing along, your website can become a central hub of sorts where everything meets and connects.

However, if you get your website created without a real marketing strategy in place, you’ll find yourself going back to your designer for tweaks and other bells and whistles. Structuring your site around any marketing plans you have set in place is easier and less expensive in the long run.

The better planned your marketing strategy is, the easier most everything else is going to be to get rolling. Just make sure to keep your goals consistent and realistic and your marketing efforts can help fuel the engine of you success!

 There are businesses and brands all over the globe that are succeeding in different ways. There is no one surefire way to arrange your marketing schemes to get you to the next level. There are hundreds of different of marketing approaches that vary from business to business. Some are successful and some are not.

Still, out of all of those approaches, there are three strategies that seem to stay fairly stable and at the core of many successful marketing tactics. If you’re new to marketing or just can’t seem to get your current marketing approaches to work, see what you can do to incorporate the following into

Don’t Shift Objectives: Don’t give up on your marketing goals too quickly. Switching around the very reasons for your marketing tactics will cost you time, money, and confuse your customers. Starting from scratch on anything is frustrating and can set you back.

Know Your Customers: This is perhaps one of the most important cornerstones of developing a winning marketing plan. You have to know your customers inside and out: what are their hot topics, what presses their buttons, what they are looking for at that every moment, what trends do they tend to keep up with?  If you know all of this (and more!) you will be able to more accurately target your marketing. If you want to win against your competition, it starts at knowing your audience well.

Plan Ahead: It’s hard to resist starting a marketing campaign when you are certain you have a great idea. But starting before you have the entire strategy mapped out can be dangerous. You can end up sinking a lot of money and time into a strategy that ends up stalling a few weeks later. Take the time to plan ahead; if you start with simple social marketing in the first stage, you should have a very distinct idea as to when the next phase will start. Make a plan, mark it on your calendar and—most important of all—stick to it.

What experience do you have with these three crucial points? Which do you think is more important?