Spiker Communications

Marketing Here. Marketing There. Marketing Everywhere

The sooner developers understand that everything they do is marketing, the sooner they will see their brand on the road to success.

We have the opportunity of working with many successful developers and entrepreneurs. The ones that seem to stand out and grow faster, and gain the lion’s share of their market are the ones that really understand how important marketing is and that marketing is much more than just the website.

Marketing is everything, including the kitchen sink.

When I get a request for everything, from logo to vehicles signage to sales center walls, I smile a great big grin. Not because it means a lot of work for my team, but because it means that we have a client that is serious about their branding and our efforts will not only be noticed and felt, but appreciated. This is where Spiker Communications really shines.

A lot of people believe their logo, business cards and website is marketing. It’s only a small portion of marketing, as everything is marketing: from how your phone is answered to how clean your sales office is to how your hair looks. Everything you do embodies the spirit and essence of the brand. This also influences how your staff feels about your brand and how they reinforce the brand message in what they do. This is reflected in how they deal with the prospect and your brand shows through.

If you’re selling a luxury brand or anything of quality, you can’t be handing out cheap pens - cheap begets cheap. Because your brand essence is so much more than just your logo and web site, you need to look at all the ways your customer experiences your brand and make sure they are in sync with your brand message.

Your brand has to walk the walk, and talk the talk. To do this, you have to understand that everything you do is marketing because marketing is everything.

Feedback Kills

For the last couple of months, we’ve been working with a client that insists on showing the work to everyone and anyone. In listening to their interpretation of the feedback, we know more about the person making the comment than on the actual work. We even had a client take a phone call from a "customer" who commented that if the client could afford multiple billboard locations in town, that they should pay their people more.

I’m not usually interested in feedback as the source is usually not qualified to comment, as they are not the audience that we are targeting. But feedback today is a major problem for us, such as the English major who insists that single-sentence paragraphs "aren’t allowed" and who may be qualified to critique a book, but certainly knows nothing about writing marketing text.

This doesn’t mean I don’t listen to feedback. For example, I listen to what clients say they’re looking for. That tells me something about them, and there’s often more in their feedback than what appears on the surface. This is where the "Golden Rule" comes into play. Whoever has the gold makes the rules, and that’s why I listen very closely to their feedback.

First Impressions Still Matter

Many people say business cards are becoming obsolete in the age of V-cards, smart phones, Facebook and LinkedIn, though I think the opposite is true. Business cards represent the identity of organizations and individuals, and they create many first physical impressions.

The business card exchange is one of the most important, galvanizing rituals between two or more people who are likely to engage in some greater social or business interaction. The business card not only is a tangible artifact that creates first impressions, it reinforces second and third impressions when a recipient refers to it for future reference or contact data entry.

Business cards perform basic utility, but they are also accessories that say a lot about you, signals that promote or detract from your company or personal brand. Whether you’re a free agent or an employee, in good economic times or bad, business cards are like oxygen for your ability to do better business.

That’s why I’d like to share a list of best practices for business cards, emphasizing elegance, etiquette and practically:

1. Material and surface. High-quality, tactile paper with rounded corners creates a friendlier and more substantial experience. Rounded corners, as the credit-card industry figured out decades ago, are less likely to catch or slice through people’s skin. And nobody wants their business card to cause a paper cut.
2. Simple design. Adopt a simple, beautiful design. If you’re not a great designer, hire one. Use light backgrounds, multiple colors, and a beautiful font, and ensure the type is large enough so people with poor eyesight can read it. Business cards are not items to get cheaply. Invest in them the same way you’d invest in nice shoes.
3. Minimalism. Omit extraneous information like industry affiliations, certifications and multiple academic degrees, unless they’re really important and highly relevant to your card recipients. Use fewer words, not more, and that includes keeping job titles descriptive yet as short as possible. Don’t include more contact information than your e-mail, office and mobile phone numbers, and a physical address. If people really need your fax number, they’ll call or e-mail you. Lots of white space is not only cleaner, but it makes you stand out against the clutter and complexity that are so many other business cards.
4. Use Them. Keep business cards with you, always in reach. These days, with few exceptions, not having business cards makes you look unprepared and unprofessional. Simply put, business cards won’t benefit you if you don’t have them.
5. Presentation. Keep your business cards neat. Worse than not having business cards is having poorly kept business cards. Do you think recipients like accepting crinkled, dirty cards that came out of the inner pocket of your old leather wallet. No, that’s disgusting and insulting. I have a dedicated leather card holder that improves my image and accentuates the overall business-card exchange.
6. Grace. Present and accept business cards with grace. I’ve long admired how the Japanese handle the business-card exchange. According to Wikipedia, the presenter holds the card out with both hands and introduces himself, with the bottom of the card facing the recipient so they can read it as it is being handed over. A receiver should not write on or place the card in a pocket. The proper procedure is to file the card at the rear of your business card holder.
7. Don’t personalize. Many people want to personalize their cards, with a photo, a quote, or some personal graphic to make them stand out. A business card is not the time to be cute or different. The design of the card should be all the difference you need to communicate.