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Startup Revolution
Our Future Depends On Startup Heroes.
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Rescooped by Martin (Marty) Smith from Expertiential Design
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Branding For Startups: Win Hearts, Minds, Loyalty

Branding For Startups: Win Hearts, Minds, Loyalty | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it

Marty Note
The linked post is important, but not for the reasons they think. The post mentions the factoid that most people wouldn't mind if 73% of brands disappeared. The post discusses brands like Tom's who wins hearts and minds with cause marketing.

We love Tom's too. Yes, what you do with customer money is important these days. We prefer the Cone Communications (http://www.conecomm.com/ ) "social good" study that shows a growing trend. Consumers what to know how your STUFF helps change the world.

People don't BUY brands they JOIN them.
Faith Popcorn

Marketing guru Faith Popcorn's quote is a favorite. We would reposition the linked post toward the more important question - how is your brand creating sustainable community. Since most of http://www.Curagami.com customers are online merchants we would write the goal as, "How is your brand creating sustainable ONLINE community".

Online community is the secret to branding and engagement over time. We think of loyalty with two dimensions:

* Engagement over TIME (joining and visiting).

* Advocacy (willing to share with friends).

Every visitor can achieve #1, but a tiny % of your website's traffic will ever do #1 due to the 1:9:90 Rule. The 1:9:90 Rule explains the strange math of website visitors:

1% Contributors - 1% of your traffic will contribute content such as comments, reviews and the social shares such User Generated Content (UGC) generate.
9% Supporters - this group loves to share your content especially if it came from the 1%ers.
90% Readers - More important than their label makes them sound, Readders are the core of your visitors and so essential to SEO and your expanding web universe.

The trick to web marketing few discuss is converting that tribe of Contributors, Supporters and Readers into a sustainable online community. Branding creates the shorthand your Contributors and Supports use to ADVOCATE.

When you market by proxy, you are using Contributors and Supporters to reach their friends, you must encapsulate deep meaning into shareable "Made To Stick" bits and bytes. Your advocates can't share if your message is too complicated, so boil it down, mix it up and test, test and test some more. In there somewhere is the strange alchemy your brand needs to compel action (joining and advocating) and so win hearts, minds and loyalty.

BTW, I bent this post toward startups because every startup is tabula rasa when it comes to branding. Startups are blank slates written on by every piece of content, social share and tool created. We don't brand in order to create loyalty we win hearts, minds and loyalty in order to create brands and First Rule of Branding is what the linked post has backwards.



Via Eric_Determined / Eric Silverstein, Michael Allenberg
Eric_Determined / Eric Silverstein's curator insight, November 7, 2014 2:07 PM

According to a survey, most people would not care if 73% of the brands would disappear!?


Share your latest experience on what your favorite brands are doing to earn your Loyalty, and ultimately your Advocacy?


It does start with earning your #trust.


Great insight @annettefranz @SDLjames with strong value connections @TOMS @USAA



Ahmed Alkandari's curator insight, November 15, 2014 9:01 PM

"Most people worldwide would not care if more than 73% of brand disappeared." So, are companies wasting their money on advertisements and marketing; since, most people won't care about weather the brand will disappeared or not?! People who have brand loyalty are supposed to care if the brand they are loyal to will be available or not on the future. Also would these people considered faithful to their brand if they don't care?

What are brands might been doing wrong with customers?

don't focus on the customersare not providing value relative to priceare not providing value relative to the competition/alternativeshave broken customers' trustdon't deliver on their promisesdon't care about customersdon't meet customer expectationsare not innovative (think "same old same old")deliver a fragmented or poor experience

With all of these point, the relationship between them and their customers will be broken. Therefore, companies should focus more on their customers and design a good customer experience. Companies shouldn't only care about making money, they should also care and focus about being a part of something that matters to people and mean something to them.

 

Most of the article was asking questions and some questions didn't have answers in the article, they are open for general thinking and answering. It's interesting about how most people won't care if a brand disappeared on the future; for me I would! Of course life won't stop and new brands will enter the market. However, Some brands people got used to it and can's change that easily; the example of Apple. I also found it important about what they mentioned for customers relationship with the company. In my opinion, companies that focuses more on their relationship with their customers and making sure to build an experience with their customers are more successful than companies that focusses on making profits and increase their revenue. I a customer became loyal to a company and he had an experience with that company, he won't mind paying more on that company's goods. The reason is that the company had built a trust and an experience to that customer so he will be faithful and he would care about the brand and the company.

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Marketing's "Hero's Journey" Sourcing the World & Avoiding Filter Bubbles via @Curagami

Marketing's "Hero's Journey" Sourcing the World & Avoiding Filter Bubbles via @Curagami | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it
True Quest of the new marketing is winning hearts and minds by creating friends of friends marketing and creating online community.
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Rescooped by Martin (Marty) Smith from Internet Marketing Strategy 2.0
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Splurgy Engages, Motivates and Rewards Your Best Social Media Fans [video]


Robin Good: Splurgy is a new web service which allows you to engage and reward your best social media fans by offering them unique discounts, coupons and access to offers in exchange for their contribution to make those actions "visible" to their own social networks.


With Splurgy it is also possible to make access to exclusive content, links or guides on your web site available only to those that are your true social advocates. The “Fangate” feature allows your website to give access to exclusive content only to those who follow your social channels.


Last but not least Splurgy collects the name and e-mail address of every user that socially engages with your promotions.


Free to use.


Key features: http://www.splurgy.com/features/


Video tutorials: http://vimeo.com/splurgy/videos/rss


More info: http://www.splurgy.com/




Via Robin Good
Martin (Marty) Smith's insight:

Malcolm Gladwell taught us not all customers are equal in his book The Tipping Point. Gladwell segmented customers into Salespeople, Connectors and Mavens. Each persona has different value and needs different communication. 

Splurgy looks like a great tool allowing segmentation and reward. The other thing we know from the 1:10:89 rule is that very few visitors will actively engage (1% will contribute content, 10% are willing to vote  on the content created by the 1% and 89% ride for free). 


Any tool that helps segment and reward the 11% (or so) of your customers that are highly engaged is valuable so Splurgy away.

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The Towel & The Soap A Customer Service Fable

The Towel & The Soap A Customer Service Fable | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it

The Towel & The Soap A Customer Service Fable
I don't envy the hotel business (the kingdom in today's fable). After 7 years of plenty the hotel business has experienced 7 lean years. They've survived by CUTTING and TRIMMING.

The problem with the sythe is it isn't a very precise instrument. You can't cut your way into our hearts. Winning customer loyalty in a time when anyone with a spare room is in the hotel business thanks to AirBnB means paying attention to the tiniest details that say LOVE and CARE.

Courtyard by Marriott, a great hotel overall, missed on two tiny but important things. Now the question is will they listen and change. Will you?

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New Money: Startup Investment Criteria - via @CrowdFunde

New Money: Startup Investment Criteria - via @CrowdFunde | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it

Don't Ask The Wrong Questions
Statup Investors Often Ask The WRONG Questions in the WRONG ways. Here are examples of GOOD questions to ask startup entrepreneurs:


* How many unique visitors will your site get daily in the first year?

* How many downloads (or sales) will your site make daily?

* What is projected cost of customer acquisition first through third years?

* Where will your website’s traffic come from? Top 3 – 5 sources?

* Who are you disrupting and what is the PageRank PageSpread and number of inbound Links.



Complete list is included in the linked post on CrowdFunde
http://crowdfunde.com/new-money-startup-investment-criteria/


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