123 eGuides

123 eGuides. 3 Proven Steps, Just 3 Bucks.

123 eGuides are authoritative guides published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost. Every 123 eGuide is just 3 bucks or less ($2.99 to be exact).

123 eGuides are designed for today’s reader who wants information in a quick, convenient, easily readable format. Each 123 eGuide is intended to provide a functional overview rather than a detailed roadmap. Every 123 eGuide always includes additional resources if the reader wants to learn more.

Check the "Available 123 eGuides" link above to see what's available. 123 eGuides are available wherever eBooks are sold, including the Amazon Kindle store and in any eBook format at Smashwords.com.

1 Minute Advice: You Need a Social Media Plan

Most marketers are using social media, but not always in a planned, programmatic way. Writing for MarketingProfs, Sandra Gudat, head of the agency Customer Communications Group, says a social media plan should be integrated with your customer marketing strategy to ensure customer engagement and customer base expansion.

Gudat suggests building a social media plan with five key thoughts in mind:

1. Check your goals
2. Know your social customers
3. Develop your messaging
4. Fill in your social calendar
5. Track metrics.

Gudat says it's also smart to include a customer loyalty program in a social media strategy and to create "shareworthy social media posts." She views social media as a "prime opportunity to engage your customers one-to-one."

Read more from Gudat's article here (free registration required): https://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2019/40455/get-started-on-your-social-media-plan-because-it-matters-to-your-customer-marketing

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.

1 Minute Advice: Brands with the Most Buzz

Brand rankings are based on a variety of factors, but one of the more interesting rankings is based on "buzz."

The nearly 2000 brands in the YouGov BrandIndex were ranked using the Buzz score which asks respondents, “If you've heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?” Scores are net scores, calculated by subtracting the percentage of negative responses from the percentage of positive responses for each brand.

The "Buzz Ranking" shows the brands with the highest average Buzz scores between January and December 2018. The "Buzz Improvers" ranks the brands with the highest increase in Buzz comparing scores in years 2017 and 2018, to be included the year over year variance must be positive. Both scores are representative of the general population.

All brands must be tracked for at least 6 months to be included in the rankings, and must have been tracked for at least 6 months in the prior year’s period (as well as being currently tracked) to appear in the movers tables.

For 2018, these were the top ten brands in the Buzz Ranking:

1. Netflix
2. Amazon
3. Amazon Prime
4. Samsung
5. YouTube
6. Dawn
7. Toyota
8. M&Ms
9. Home Depot
10. Chick-fil-A

These were the top ten brands considered Buzz Improvers:

1. United
2. Ring doorbell
3. Samsung
4. American Airlines
5. Chick-fil-A
6. Uber
7. Pepsi
8. Hulu
9. Goldman Sachs
10. Target

For more information about the YouGov BrandIndex go here: http://www.brandindex.com/ranking/us/2018-buzz/top-buzz-improver-rankings

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.

1 Minute Advice: Brand Growth Stems from Positive Associations

Fighting for brand attention and, even more importantly, the growth of a brand is always a major challenge for brand marketers. Two marketing experts believe that brand growth doesn't necessarily come from traditional brand marketing tactics, such as Internet or point-of-purchase advertising. "Rather, it takes place in the subconscious mind of prospective customers. And their purchasing decisions are much more malleable and easily influenced than many brand leaders realize," write marketing psychology professor Michael Platt and brand growth strategist Leslie Zane in an opinion piece on Knowledge@Wharton.

They continue, "Brands that dominate and are growing in their categories are bursting with a myriad of positive associations." Based on the Human Connectome, which is a complete map of the neural connections in a brain, Platt and Zane have come up with something they call the "Brand Connectome." They suggest that "every brand has its own mini-network of associations composed of every memory a customer has of the brand. These accumulated memories, both positive and negative, form what we call the Brand Connectome.  Think of the brand as a tree planting its roots in customers’ subconscious. As the brand grows, it adds more associations and more branches to hold them. And as the branches take root in our memories, the tree spans more of the brain’s terrain."

Platt and Zane believe "The more similar and positive a Brand Connectome is among customers, the more likely they are to recall it — a key component of brand equity and major driver of purchases. In fact, a robust Brand Connectome filled with positive memories is actually the source of what is often referred to as the “emotional connection” to a brand."

Pretty heady stuff... and certainly worth considering.

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.

1 Minute Advice: Do You Make These Email Marketing Mistakes?

Common mistakes in marketing are... all too common. They can be campaign killers, especially if they are made unwittingly. One of the more obvious places mistakes can be made is email marketing. Email  continues to be very effective as a marketing medium, but it must be used properly.

Writing for MarketingProfs, Erika Taylor Montgomery identifies thirteen specific email marketing mistakes that you should avoid. Among them are:

• Not making use of personalization
• Not taking the time to segment your email list
• Not taking full advantage of automated emails
• Failing to review analytics
• Overlooking mobile email users
• Ineffective email subject lines
• Overdoing it on sales language.

For more about the above seven email marketing mistakes, as well as learning about the other six mistakes, read Erika's informative article (free sign-up required): https://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2018/40171/13-common-email-marketing-mistakes-to-avoid?

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.

1 Minute Advice: Video Marketing Growing in Importance

A report entitled "The State of Video Marketing" indicates that 83 percent of marketers say video content is becoming "more important," according to coverage by Marketing Charts. The use of video across many marketing formats is growing as well: Now 85 percent of marketers use video on their websites, 84 percent use video on social media, 55 percent use video in email, and 55 percent use video in webinars.

The majority (59 percent) of responding marketers believe that video converts sales leads better than other forms of content. The majority (55 percent) of marketers increased their video marketing budget in 2018.

The report was based on a survey of 271 marketing executives, 50 percent of whom work in B2B companies, and 21 percent of whom work in a mixture of B2B and B2C companies.

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.

1 Minute Advice: Treat Your Customer Like Your Mom

Customer service expert Jeanne Bliss has authored an intriguing book, Would You Do That to Your Mother? The "Make Mom Proud" Standard for How to Treat Your Customers. Bliss shares numerous stories in her book about companies that engage in both excellent and poor customer service.

In an interview for the Knowledge@Wharton newsletter, Bliss discusses three key shifts that are causing companies to be more sensitive to their customers:

1. Organic growth among existing customers is "ten times more profitable" than acquiring new customers
2. Social media is holding companies accountable because customers themselves are talking about the company's values
3. Silos in a company "don't organically unite," so the entire organization needs to focus on "customer math" by asking such questions as, "Did you bring in more customers than you lost?" and "Are you keeping more customers than you're losing?" 

Bliss also makes the following insightful observation: "We're finding that the more high-tech we get, the more humanity we need." Read her full interview here: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/would-you-do-that-to-your-mother/

 This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.

New Year Sale: Every eGuide, Half Off!

For a limited time only (December 25, 2018 through January 1, 2019), you can purchase every single 123 eGuide at half off: Just $1.50 each, instead of $2.99 each!

To take advantage of this New Year sale, simply visit www.smashwords.com and search for any of these 123 eGuides:

Branding 123, Second Edition
B2B Marketing 123
Low Cost/No Cost Marketing 123
Product Launch 123
Sales Leads 123
On Your Own 123

At Smashwords.com, you'll be able to purchase every one of these 123 eGuides for half price from December 25, 2018 through January 1, 2019 in the format you want: PDF, EPUB, or Kindle.

Buy your eGuides at this special price today!

1 Minute Advice: Google's Top Tips for Digital Marketing

Google issued an Economic Impact Report earlier this year that highlighted both small and large businesses and some of the digital marketing tactics they use to be successful. Writing for Think with Google, Ken Wheaton distilled the report into eight key digital marketing lessons that are worthy of consideration for every marketer. The lessons are:

• Find a need and fill it.
• Master the connection between online and offline.
• Make the best use of your data.
• Invest wisely in marketing.
• Be creative in all aspects of your business.
• Video is a marketing necessity.
• Embrace digital change.
• Grow your local business globally.

Read the article for further details about each of the above important lessons: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/omnichannel/economic-impact-report/?

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.

1 Minute Advice: Direct Response Advertising and Branding Go Hand-in-Hand

As a brand marketer focused on getting results, you may face a common dilemma: You'd like to make use of direct response advertising, which you know is measurable and results-oriented, but you think it is separate and distinct from brand marketing. Not so, writes Greg Bender of Ocean Media for MediaPost's Marketing Insider.

Bender says that the face of your brand should be consistent, regardless of the media or marketing method you use. He writes, "Unfortunately, some advertisers don’t consider this when developing DR advertising. Their focus is on driving response as efficiently (or cheaply) as possible. This may lead to creating an advertisement that checks off the key messaging points needed to drive response, but is executed in a manner incongruous with how they want (or need) the brand to be perceived." The result, Bender says, could sacrifice "long-term brand value" because the brand message and the direct response advertising don't mesh.

How do you solve the problem? By creating well-executed ads that "work just as hard at defining brand identity as driving response."

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.

1 Minute Advice: Which Brands were "Most Relevant" to Americans in 2018?

Brand relevance is a subjective measure that the brand and marketing consultancy Prophet analyzes in its annual "Brand Relevance Index." Four specific characteristics are studied: "customer obsession; ruthless pragmatism; distinctive inspiration; and pervasive innovation."

For 2018, Marketing Charts reports that Prophet's relevancy rankings indicate the following are the five most relevant brands overall:

1. Apple
2. Amazon
3. Pinterest
4. Netflix
5. Android

It is interesting to note the difference in brand relevancy between Millennials and non-Millennials, however.

Millennials Most Relevant Brands

1. Netfilx
2. Amazon
3. KitchenAid
4. Apple
5. Google

Non-Millennials Most Relevant Brands

1. Apple
2. Amazon
3. Pinterest
4. Android
5. Netflix

Here are the most relevant brands in a few select industry categories:

Airlines: Southwest
Automotive: Toyota
Grocery: Trader Joe's
Hospitality: Marriott
Restaurants: Chick-fil-A
Telecom: Verizon

 This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.