Recently we stayed at the Shade Hotel, a hip new luxury boutique hotel in Manhattan Beach. The room was to die for: chromatherapy lighting, a jacuzzi tub, a Tempurpedic bed and pillows, a high-end expresso machine. Shade sells itself on giving its guests an experience of balance, harmony and well-being and “unparalleled personal service.” Unfortunately, their service falls flat.

Shade’s crowded lobby spills into the busy bar area, leaving hotel guests who check in or out feel cramped and awkward. We were asked several times, as workers added new seating around us, if we would were waiting for a cab. It was clear we were in the way. The cab that was called for us—a van to LAX to hold all our luggage that took 30 minutes to arrive—was stolen by a drunk bar guest. The front desk person seemed unconcerned that the cab designated for us had not been secured by the valet and that we’d have to wait another half hour for a new cab. I wasn’t reassured that the new cab would be held specifically for us. Both the front desk service and valet service failed in their jobs, and several other employees made it clear that we were in the way of them expanding the bar even further into the lobby.

We would have stayed at Shade again. We loved the room and the “experience"—all up until the last 30 minutes. Shade’s bad customer service at the “end game” of our experience negated all the goodwill we felt up until that point.

what your customers will remember

Good customer service is critical to any business, but when you sell a high-end product or service, it needs to be even better. Shade hasn’t replied to the customer service survey I sent in that detailed all of this. After dropping nearly $400 at their hotel, we’re left feeling like chopped liver and that the Shade Hotel did not live up to the promise its brand made. The chocolate on our pillows at night, the high-end products in the bathroom and the free shot of espresso don’t make up for the final 30 minutes, when we were unappreciated and ignored.

Two times can critically make or break your business: the beginning, when a customer first sees the “face” of your company, and the end, when your customer leaves your services or product behind. Your end game is what customers will remember; do you create an endgame that establishes further goodwill, or do you leave a sour taste in your customer’s mouths?

Your brand can promise the world, but if your service doesn’t live up to the promise your brand makes, you weaken the reputation of your business and strength of your brand. 

When you look at your brand and the brands of your competitors, what do you see? Are they all alike? Is there nothing distinguishing or eye-catching about your brand? Have you had the same one for over twenty years, while your niche has changed?

There are both pitfalls and profits in changing your brand. For example, it can be mistake to radically change your brand, as some companies do once they’ve been bought out or merged with other companies. Identity is lost. However, as the above article notes, “small is good,” and “medium is sometimes necessary.” But what about huge changes? Sometimes, even major brand changes are justified.

It all depends on how much name recognition your brand has. Don’t change it without consulting with your customers, and potential customers, about why they come to you based on your brand. If your customers are steadily dwindling away to your competitors, changes are probably necessary. But changing for the sake of change, especially repeatedly, can create a disconnect and confusion with your customers.

If you’ve already got a great story and booming business, keep at it and make incremental changes along the way to ensure your business’ story remains one worth telling. But if you’re like the bar in restaurant makeover that offers the same quesadillas that everyone else serves, now’s a good time to consider a switch to Roti Canai.

“...find an abstract image that is clean and simple and carries very little meaning--until your brand adds that meaning. It’s not a popularity contest. Or a job for a committee. It’s not something where you should run it by a focus group. It’s just a placeholder, a label waiting to earn some meaning.”

Too many designers and marketing folks are using the word “brand” to describe a company’s logo, stationery or business cards. Your brand isn’t your choice of the color purple, or the cutesy illustration you use on your site (unless, of course, you become known for the cutesty illustrations on all your work, and that essentially becomes your brand) or the typography you choose.

Your brand is a combination between the meaning you create about your company, product or service, and the meaning others put on it over time.  If an agency or designer tells you they can assist you with branding, casually ask, “Oh, you mean my logo and business cards?” If the answer is yes, without any other detailed information about how a brand is built over time, consider finding yourself a simple logo designer, and find a brand expert or do the branding yourself. Sound like a scary proposition? Read any of Seth Godin’s many books, or The Brand Gap, and you’re halfway there. 

Don’t you want to go where everybody knows your name?

You could sum up Cheers, both the sitcom and its fictional bar, with that one line. Talk about a bar with a compelling brand.

What if Cheers had just positioned itself as a “sports” bar? Or a “pool hall”? Those might have been factual statements, but there’s nothing there that gets people talking.

A memorable brand tells your audience more than what you do or who you are. Instead, remarkable brands convey what you mean, what makes you valuable and why you are worth talking about. It grabs them by the shoulders and jolts them awake like your Monday morning coffee fix. At the least, it gets them singing along to your tune in the car.

Tell them about more than who you are

Let’s say you’re a real estate agent. You put on your advertising, website and other marketing materials simply “Jane Smith, real estate agent.” You’re at least accurate, but you’re also boring. There’s nothing to distinguish you from the 3,000 other agents in your area. You’re like an extra on a movie set—necessary, but only raking in $100 a day.

What if you positioned yourself as “Jane Smith, condo selling superstar”? Or “Jane Smith, here for you at 3am.” OK, both might be a bit over the top, but you get the idea: both statements brand your value as a real estate agent more clearly, and in a more compelling manner, than selling yourself on your title alone. These statements should be both memorable andhonest. They can catapult you from movie set extra to $15-million-a-picture Drew Barrymore.

Narrow and target your focus

Many businesses and entrepreneurs try to cast a wide net with their positioning. It’s a natural thing to do, and some of it stems from fear: “I need to target broadly or else I won’t get in enough business to make ends meet.”

Narrowing your marketing efforts can help create a more valuable and motivational brand message. For example, if you’re an interior designer, you could position your work as “innovative and bold.” That’s all fine and well, but it’s also not an overly descriptive message or call to action. What does it tell us about you and what you offer? Not much. If you shifted your brand to be something like “East meets West interiors” you immediately help your audience visualize where your specialty lies, and you’ll attract more customers who like, say, Asian-inspired work than your previous description did. If Brad Pitt moves into town and fancies himself a House of Flying Daggers-inspired abode, you might find yourself on the short list of designers he calls.

In case you’re worried about losing business, you’re not stuck just doing Asian-inspired style. Your supporting marketing material can showcase your other styles and themes while consistently reiterating your brand message of “East meets West interiors.” By narrowing your brand and targeting niches, you can pull in clients who seek specialty designers and vastly differentiate yourself from your competition—the lot of whom are likely using vague words like “modern” and “inspired” to describe their businesses.

Great brands tell good stories. You have a good story to tell—the challenge is culling and telling it. Check out The Art of Self-Branding for some more ideas on building your unique brand, and Zefrank’s humorous, but incredibly insightful, video on branding for a more in-depth look at what defines a brand.

Branding the Cheers way isn’t necessarily quick or easy, but when you choose to communicate your value and unique qualities this way, you can build a better business, see improved client or customer loyalty, and accelerate your growth. That’s worth at least a toast or two. 

Sound crazy? It could be coming soon to stores near you. A relatively new audio technology is designed to beam messages directly into your ear.

Innovative, or an irritant? A source in the article makes an important point:"It doesn’t do your brand any good if you annoy people.” Unlike permission-based marketing, these audio messages tend to invade a consumer’s private time and space. They say, in essence, “We don’t respect you, and we will market to you every chance we get, whether you like it or not.” The problem with this approach is that frustrated consumers may transfer that irritation to the brand itself and be less likely to buy whatever is being pushed at them.

Good marketers know that successful campaigns and messages are based on trust. When you shove your message down your audience’s throat, you alienate them, cause mistrust, and may lose their business completely.

Today I ordered from Barnes & Noble for the first time. Upon checkout, I saw this:

Who is creating the better customer experience? The diner or Barnes & Noble? One says “you need to accommodate to our business needs.” The other says “we will accommodate to your needs as a customer.”

Businesses send their customers messages in seemingly small ways. The businesses that grow, succeed and inspire customer loyalty send their customers messages that indicate “we appreciate you.” “Your business is important to us.” “We work to meet your needs.” Businesses--even once-successful ones--that fail or see stagnated growth often send messages that say “It’s about us.” “You should be thankful to be our customer or client.” “We don’t have time for you.”

Your messages can either endear your customers and clients to you, or chase them away. It’s about how you position your business and aligning all your business decisions and branding with a “customer-oriented” ethic. Whether you’re running a small-town diner, or a multi-million dollar corporation, the end results are the same. What are your messages, and what are they doing for your customers?

We helped her launch TracyMayor.com last week, and as of today, Tracy’s site is ranked #4 in Google for her name on Google’s .com site, and #2 on their .ca domain. Even better, Tracy had an agent email her earlier this week.

Any author or writer looking to get published, increase their exposure to editors and more easily get story queries accepted can benefit greatly from a website.  Romance author and client Karmela Johnson explained it best when she said, “Having my own website lets me have some control over what editors and publishers see when they look me up in search engines. It’s better the information they get comes from me and my website than another source.”

Not only can a website help improve and increase your visibility in search engines as an author, writer or journalist, but it can also serve as an effective way to show off your skills. Joel Schettler’s website features an extensive array of articles from numerous publications, which shows potential editors or publishers the style and tone in which he writes. Linda Formichelli’s site also showcases her writing and allows potential editors to easily peruse clips of her work online. Tracy Mayor wanted to achieve a similar goal when she came to us.

“The “service” of the site comes from giving editors a clear, well-organized, professional yet personable way to quickly assess what I’ve written before and what kind of writer I am,” Tracy says.

By managing your website with a content management system such as Wordpress or ExpressionEngine, you get the added benefit of a personal library and archival system that lets you easily keep and reference your clips or work in a highly organized, cleanly formatted manner.

A well-designed, usable website helps sell you as an author or writer, especially when you maintain it consistently and update it frequently with fresh, relevant content. Want to open previously locked doors and create connections that help grow your writing business and exposure? Get thee a website. Take it from Karmela Johnson, who got a 3-book contract after her site launched. “It wouldn’t have happened without the website,” she says. “The publishing company visited my site and was all over it. They loved both my writing and how I presented myself on the site, and offered me a contract.”

To read a few more tips about websites for authors or writers, including information on the best way to present your clips, you can also read our free article at The Renegade Writer.

21 Great Tips to Increase Your Traffic

Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz posted a great write up of 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic. Many of the tips are immediately applicable to some of our clients and readers.. A few that stand out are #3 (Write Title Tags With Two Audiences in Mind); #4 (Participate at Related Forums & Blogs; #7 (Don’t Jump on the Bandwagon (regarding memes or common news); #8 (link intelligently); #10 (Eschew Advertising (until you’re popular) ) and #11 (Cover Topics That Need Attention).

To #14, “Use a human voice” I’ll add be passionate and put heart into what you write. Audiences are good at sniffing out snake oil salesmen. In turn, they’re drawn to authentic voices and people who write about topics with both authority and passion. Although blogging is a great site and traffic building tool, I really believe it needs to be used in a way that respects your audience and doesn’t come across as “spam” or an attempt to build more traffic for the sake of building traffic.

Finding Inspiration for Blog Topics

Service-based Industries
Again, successful blogging comes down to work, research, dedication and passion. If you’re stumped for topics to blog about, ask for the help of people in your industry or profession. Find out what topics interest them, or what information they’d love to learn but have difficulty finding. If you’re in a service-based industry, ask your clients what knowledge of yours they find most valuable. Use your marketing surveys or user testimonials to help glean what knowledge of yours is particularly insightful or noteworthy.

Product-Based Industries
In a product-based industry? Write about tips and tricks to make your customer’s experience with that product better. Analyze what similar products your customers may like, and write reviews on them (beware of slamming your competitors--the idea here is to be helpful and valuable to your end user). Or, kick it up a notch and add humor or conversational value to your blog by showing your product in use in humorous or odd situations, complete with photos and captions. For example, if you sell jewelry, pop some of your pieces onto Marshmallow Peeps for Easter and do a fun write-up with photos. Cheesy? Perhaps, but maybe just cheesy enough to make a few of your readers’ days. The idea is to get people talking and engaged.

Books as Launching Points
Another way to spark a blog topic is to visit the local bookstore frequently, and invest in new titles relevant to either your industry, interests or that simply catch your eye. By leveraging books that are new releases as a stepping stone for a blog topic, you’re more likely to find yourself on the front end of blogging about the title or specific topic in the book, which may help initially position you better in search engines when others do a search on the topic or book. Beyond your position in the search engines, you’ll be offering insight or commentary on a topic or book title that hasn’t saturated the Internet yet, which can make your blog entry on the topic attractive to to early adopters. It’s increasingly strategic marketing to appeal to niches--you can use this strategy when formulating ideas for new blog topics (check out The Long Tail for more information on niche marketing and distribution).

Not every blog entry written will offer high use-value for people, but that doesn’t mean you can’t entertain them and create long-term relationships with your readers. Find ways to endear readers to you and your blog through your tone of voice, topics covered, use of humor and high-value content. By following both these tips and those cited in Rand’s “21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic,” you’ll see, with consistent application over time, improved traffic, repeat readership and perhaps even new clients or customers.

To say it’s a visually stunning, brilliant masterpiece that keeps your adrenaline pumping nearly the entire time would be an understatement. It is, quite simply, the best movie I’ve ever seen.  Here are 5 reasons why:

1. Photography and lighting. The composition of shots in this movie are the visualization of a comic novel, but we aren’t talking Superman here. Nearly every scene contains a climatic shot so well arranged and composed that you’re left wishing you could take those moments and let your eyes linger even longer on the scenes. The desaturated tones and color choices of the movie convey a gritty, nearly illustrative look.
2. Pacing and Editing. The movie never slows down, never feels dull. Don’t walk in late: the first 15 minutes are riveting.
3. Story. We all know history is open to interpretation and often written by the victors, but historical accurateness aside, you can’t help but root for the Spartans and their King Leonidas, whose sense of duty and integrity is a believable inspiration to his soldiers. Restrained writing and well-crafted acting carry the story along and ensure it doesn’t descend into cheesiness. Lena Headley, who plays Leonidas’ wife, showcases a strong female supporting lead who holds her own and fights, in her own way, while her husband is off to war.
4. Costumes and music. Have you ever seen the Hellraiser movies? There are creatures in this film reminiscent of Cenobytes, but their presence in the film serve as other-world supplemental art without ever being overbearing. (Don’t worry if you didn’t like the Hellraiser series; this is nothing like them). The score is part of what makes the pacing work so well.  Ranging from hard rock to choral palettes, the music features the voice of Azam-Ali, whose talent is in such films as The Nativity Story.
5. Battle scenes. I’m no hawk, but the battle scenes in this movie are a significant part of its success. A sweeping landscape of seemingly millions of Persian soldiers is breathtaking, a pivital moment when the small Spartan army pushes back the Persians over a cliff is visionary. Dare I say the violence in this movie is executed, well, artfully? Take Troy, Saving Private Ryan, Braveheart and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, mix them up in a blender, add a large helping of creativity, and you’ll have something close to the battle scenes in 300.

The thought and planning that went into every aspect of this movie shows incredible dedication on the part of director Zack Snyder. Movies with such attention to detail and craftmanship are increasingly rare, but 300 combines the best of both the Matrix and Sin City and succeeds in becoming the type of movie that fundamentally changes your expectations and hopes for film.