We see a ton of confusion on this issue when meeting with prospective clients, so we thought we would attempt to clean it up here. A “brand” is an expression of the core values of a company, or even an individual, like a politician. A brand reveals the fundamental reason for its existence, and how it differs from others in the category, and the experience you will enjoy when using this product.

Marketing is having your brand seen in the right places by the right people who are a match to your brand based on their past purchasing habits, demographics and psychographics of those whose values match your brand’s values. What is their residence zip code, what credit cards do they use, where do they like to take a vacation, what is their choice of automobile, which media do they listen to or read to get their news or to entertain themselves?

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It’s relatively simple. A “Brand” comes first and “Marketing” flows from the brand’s reason for its existence. Don’t get this backwards, marketing is promoting your brand in the right place to the right people at the right time so your prospects will identify with it and feel compelled to purchase your brand.

Marketing is where Creativity comes in in spades. You need to be fascinating in today’s cluttered marketplace to even be noticed. So step outside your comfort box and show the world what your brand stands for and how their experiences with you will make it all worthwhile to spend their hard-earned money with your brand, not just today, but in the future.

The Facts

A recent article in Forbes addressed this issue on time management in a study they did showing how little of their salespeople’s time is spent in actual selling. Here is the bottom line: Sales reps are only spending one-third of their time selling. This just can’t happen. Creative people create, production people produce, and sales people sell. That’s the way I was trained and educated.

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Let me put this in dollars and cents. The average sales rep is paid $105,482 a year. If, as they reported, 64.8% of the sales rep time is spent on non-revenue generating activities, the typical company spends $68,352 per rep per year to pay him or her for tasks they were not hired to do. That’s a lot of coin for administrative issues, and it’s got to stop.

It’s not that reps don’t want to spend more time selling, they tell Forbes. It’s just they struggle to get through “the crap.” What is all this crap that is taking the bulk of their sales time? I don’t know about you, but it’s our job as managers and owners to fix this to make it easier for reps to sell. Sales is a complicated profession, and based on this data, the 35.2% of time reps spend selling is leading to just 53% achievement of their quota revenue goals.

We need to be asking our sales reps “How easy are we to work with?” and hear them out.

Amazon and others are willing to pay less-than-happy employees to quit the company. Employees who accept what’s called “The Offer” by Amazon agree to not work for the organization again. The reported buyout is $5,000 to go away and not come back. In California, I’m told that everyone gets two weeks paid severance. So employees, or former employees, take any job, work for a month, if they can last that long, get fired, and then take two weeks off with full pay. Then repeat the process somewhere else. This is insane to me.

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Employers would likely rather have employees stay when possible, because it’s cheaper and builds positive morale. No one wants a turn-style employee. But we also have a responsibility to our other employees to weed out workers that are spreading negativity or otherwise dragging the rest of the workforce down with their poor attitudes, theft of not only company time on their smart phones but actual company product walking out the front door. We can read all the Harvard Business Review articles on motivating employees, but none of that training, worker happiness, and taking ownership will help with these types of people playing the system. It’s time to put our foot down with our state legislatures and correct this liberal taking advantage of the “Man,” as those less inclined to put in a full day’s work for a full day’s pay tend to call us.

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This report highlights a significant disconnect between what consumers expect from multichannel ad campaigns and what marketers are actually delivering. As with everything else marketing, campaigns need a strong central idea with coherent and consistent imagery and messaging across platforms to avoid fragmentation and yield consistent positive results.

The fix is simple really. This signals the need for marketers to design compelling campaigns around a fascinating single idea. This makes for a better understanding of how to reach consumers in unobtrusive and creative ways on the platforms or channels where consumers are most receptive to your message. Otherwise, you risk encouraging further adoption of technology like ad blockers or just having your audience tune you out all together.

The choice is yours, continuing boring customers into a coma, or reach for the stars.

The Facts
Facebook will finally let users determine what news sources are trustworthy. As an overhaul to its News Feed, the platform will prioritize news content that the viewers view as trustworthy, informative and relevant to them. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted the news, saying it’s a move against “sensationalism, misinformation and polarization” online.

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Facebook over the past year has been working to remove fake news, spam and clickbait from their feed in order to improve transparency and the overall quality of content shared on its platform.
Brands should now be concerned with creating meaningful, relevant and localized content that appeals to its users. This extends to brands looking for organic over-paid reach as well, along with those who frequently produce branded content with publisher partners. In the wake of these shifts, some marketers are getting more bullish on Facebook influencer content as a way to preserve organic reach on the platform.

The Facts
According to a new study, within three years around 40% of all American consumers will use a voice assistant as an alternative to a mobile app or website, They also found that 81% of users of voice assistants have used them via smartphones, while around 32% have used them on a smart speaker such as Alexa or Echo.

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At this point, the rise of voice assistants seems pretty much undeniable, and the growth of voice as a search or even shopping interface demands our attention. We still probably haven’t seen the last of new assistants being unveiled either. Where there are leaders, followers are bound to ensue.
Brands will need to pay close attention to how this evolution plays out, as it could influence how and where they will want to spend the bulk of their digital dollars. Making the right choices about investing in voice assistants could mean a handsome payoff in the very near future.