In the past, the primary goal of brand marketing was to create awareness and recall for the brand. The difference between awareness and recall can be best understood as awareness being the desired customer’s ability to remember having heard of the brand if the brand is identified, whereas recall is the ability of a desired customer to name your brand when the brand category (industry, niche, product, service) is identified generically.

Over recent decades, brand advertisers have increasingly realized that brand awareness and recall does not necessarily translate into sales and true brand equity. For that value to be established in the information age of the 21st Century, a brand must go beyond and deeper than awareness or recall. Today’s successful brands must resonate with their audiences. Brand resonance is the relationship and level of identification of the customer with a brand.

Healthcare practices tend to prefer this method of marketing because it focuses on the positive image and qualities of the practice and the practitioners. While brand-based marketing has obvious benefit and appeal, it also presents some limitations and challenges for most private practices.

Brand-based marketing challenges for private practices
Brand-based marketing requires massive amounts of exposure and repetition to establish and maintain awareness, recall and resonance with the desired audience. Those massive amounts of exposure and repetition usually translate into equally massive and consistent volume of marketing dollars in the practice marketing budgets.

Most private practices (like other small businesses) have limited budget resources for marketing – particularly by comparison to the large corporations that commonly use this method of marketing. This limitation represents a significant challenge to success in utilizing exclusively brand-based marketing methods.

The other major challenge is time required to develop brand equity through increased recognition, recall and resonance.

Consumers today are besieged and inundated with literally thousands of marketing and advertising messages every single day. In order to have any chance to break through the “clutter” of informational and promotional “noise” to achieve awareness, recall and resonance, the marketing effort must be consistent and constant. Even so, it takes time (and money) to achieve results, and it is difficult (if not impossible) to predict how much time it will take to get measurable results with exclusively brand-building strategies and tactics.

Authentic Marketing is really about being an excellent communicator. Create a strong message, and then communicate it with confidence so that the people, who are in need of your service, can know who you truly are.

Traditional marketing is not dead, as most online marketers would have you believe – but there is a need to integrate both in your authentic marketing.

Barriers to reach the minds of customers are increasing!
Increased noise, choice and increasing customer sophistication is leading to increasing choosiness online. Customers will grow tired following people on social media, unless what you say matters to them. As the volume of information online exponentially increases, we will see customers cutting back on attention.

Social media!
Small professional businesses understand that social media is part of an integrated and authentic approach towards promoting their business. At Kreative Group, we provide a difference through the integration of the authentic marketing planning process – being clear about your values – your business and marketing objectives – your authentic message – your ideal customers – who you want to talk to and how.

Many small businesses know they need to enter the online marketing world but either don’t know where to start or fear the consequences of missing the mark. That consequence can be wasted effort in time as well as money.

Create a remarkable positioning statement!
It does not matter if your business is online or offline – you need to have a remarkable positioning statement. Your positioning is what you stand for, what you represent. It is what separates you from all the rest in your field and lends you credibility. Your positioning is a mixture of your values, your personality, your target audience, and your strong selling points. You can convey your positioning through a website if you are an online business. What is your positioning? What is your business all about? What makes you stand out? And furthermore – can prospective customers tell what that difference is?

Create a niche marketing strategy, a strong message and stay consistent!
Authentic Marketing and marketing well should be at the core of your business. Although there are many mediums you can use to market yourself, always keep your message consistent and simple. This is especially true if you are a small business and have a tight budget. While you may definitely want to be all things to all people, a niche market strategy will help you keep your message clear, consistent and cost effective.

Look after and leverage current customers!
It is very easy to forget existing customers while soliciting new ones. Strong, authentic marketing messages will bring you new customers, but the quality of your customer service delivery is what will keep customers coming back; and keep them raving about you.

Measure your marketing efforts!
Marketing is a process, and there are two very important points about this process.

1. It takes time.
2. You must be able to measure results.

One of the most common marketing mistakes small businesses make is that they don’t give their marketing campaign time to really kick in. Marketing does take time. It takes time to catch on, and it takes time to reveal results.

Authentic Message to the World

“Authenticity” simply means being true to who you are-aligning your every thought and action with who and what you were created to be and do. This can be taken in many ways but is essentially what is true for you and what you know that to be and in terms of how you are in you are operating and marketing business. Your clients are seeing the true self that you offer to the world and they expect to get the best you that you are and that means the service will be acceptable. As we operate in our businesses we have the choice to be and serve and how we are in our business is a testament to who we are and how we operate. Truthfully, our clients do receive it in energy and they can discern just how authentic are and if you actually care about them and their business or are you just in it for the money.

Business relationships are about building truthful relations between a business owner and a potential client. How can your business best serve the client and it be a win-win for both parties? Some business owners have a hard time being authentic because there are afraid to allow others to see the real “them”. Which, may be in terms if you are providing a service such as coaching, consulting, an author or any other industry? Sharing who you are shows your client that you are real and that they can relate to you. It is important to be who you are because why would you send any untruth about you and your brand into the world to reap that back?

You and your business are connected and how you view the world, your business, brand, clients and others does go out into your marketing message and people do receive exactly what you give out. So why not be truthful and authentic as you serve in your business because that is what others will receive from you because that is the energy that you give off.

I recommend that this year in 2012 that you work on being as authentic about yourself and your business because that is what draws your ideal client. That is what goes out into your marketing message and how the world sees you and your business.

What you say actually matters but creating a strong message is not simple!

Authentic Marketing is really about being an excellent communicator. Create a strong message, and then communicate it with confidence so that the people, who are in need of your service, can know who you truly are.

Traditional marketing is not dead, as most online marketers would have you believe – but there is a need to integrate both in your authentic marketing.

This in my view is one of the Big Myths Of Building A Coaching Practice or Service Business, and it really annoys me to see would-be coaches being duped and misled in this way. The fact is, with any buying decision, the buyer has questions and concerns that need to be addressed, and not all of them will be handled in the free consultation.

Over the years I’ve encountered people who are frustrated and demoralized by their conversion of free consultations into paying business. So what’s the answer? Are we for or against free consultations? My take on this is that free consultations might work, but you need to use them in the right way, and that means asking the prospect to take the next step at the end of the session.

The Free Consultation Won’t Do The Selling For You!

The trouble is, many people use free consultations in the hope that the consultation will do the selling for them, and they won’t have to engage in the ‘dirty’ business of asking for the order. So the consultation comes to an end, the service provider says, “I hope you enjoyed that/found it useful”, and then waits for the client to initiate the next step, because they don’t want to be ‘pushy’. Meanwhile the prospect is actually waiting for some direction from the service provider, yet when none is forthcoming, leaves, or ends the phone call, confused. So if you are going to offer free consultations, make sure that at the very least you invite the prospect to take the next step, and find out what questions and concerns they have about proceeding.

The free consultation should pave the way for a sales conversation to take place, not replace it. They Take Up Your Time The main objection I have to ‘free consultations’ as a selling tool is how much time they take. When you’re running your own business, time is the most valuable resource you have. You can always make more money, but none of us, not even Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey, can manufacture more time. Most people, especially when they are starting out, think that they are cash-poor, but time rich, and therefore happily offer free sessions in the hope that it will win them some business. The trouble is, if you’re even half way good at what you do, it won’t take long for word to get round, and your calendar will be full with free consultations, but no paying clients.

I suggest that instead of offering free consultations ‘one-to-one’ you offer group tele-coaching preview calls. That way you will leverage your time and can simultaneously reach a number of prospects.

What Type Of Prospects Do You Attract With Free Offers?

I hate to say it, but in my experience it’s true, when you offer anything for free, you will attract a percentage of people who will never, ever buy from you no matter what you do for them. I have had many successful coaches admit to me privately that it was only when they found the confidence to charge for an introductory’ session that they attracted a better caliber of client. I’m not saying don’t offer free stuff – but offer things that are low cost for you to deliver and high perceived value to the prospect e.g. special report, e-book, free teleseminar. Things that take your time on a one-to-one basis are a HIGH cost to deliver, because it’s time you can’t sell to anyone else, or time you could be spending on other projects.

Why People Say No To Free Consultations

Some people are mystified that even when they offer something free – people don’t want it. I’m reminded of the man in Hyde Park who, as an experiment, started offering $5 notes to passers by, only to be refused! There are a whole host of reasons why someone might be reluctant to take up your free consultation.

First, they might be worried about what they are getting into, secondly it’s wrong to assume that the financial risk is the only barrier preventing someone from doing business with you. They might be worried about being vulnerable or looking foolish. In these circumstances the prospect will take the safest option i.e. do nothing!

So should you offer free consultations? Well, at the risk of sounding like a politician, it depends. What I’ve done in this article is give you some things to take into consideration. At the end of the day, you have to consider all the options and make the decision that is best for your business right now. (You can always change your mind later).

In recent months I have heard countless people talking about what’s next for the world wide web. The reality is that Web 3.0 is already here and this is evidenced by those websites who are taking user behavior into consideration when defining an online user experience.

Web 3.0 is all about improving the experience of web site browsers and helping them make the right decisions quickly. Now that the Internet has expanded significantly and there are billions of pages of information, getting through that information effectively has become a challenge.

Enter behavioral data and the concept of Web 3.0. In the next iteration of the web world, users’ activities are being tracked closely. These activities include a range of behaviors like their on-site behavior, purchase history, order frequency, size, and quantity as well as tastes and preferences they have exhibited while surfing the Net.

In addition to collecting real time information, Web 3.0 is flexible enough to allow online merchants to integrate user history – past purchases, preferences, and actions around promotions and other once in time events. This allows each online retailer or provider to create unique user profiles based on purchase history, learned preferences and individual behavior to drive personalized recommendations.

These recommendations are made on actual data that is unique to the individual. Today’s web environment leverages the recommendations of others, top selling products, etc. to make recommendations. Unfortunately, this type of intelligence doesn’t work for everyone as it doesn’t take into consideration the unique preferences and buying behaviors of the individual.

Web 3.0 intelligence anonymously and securely analyzes every customer and web browser to your website. Learning patterns and the context that drives buying decisions will be used to create a highly personalized user experience for each individual. This may be a point of concern for all of you privacy buffs out there but the reality is that web sites track user behavior today and the information becomes more and more sophisticated. There are many concepts of a recommendation engine already out there and a retail recommender isn’t such a bad thing.

For me the issues isn’t about tracking the behavior, it’s more about how it’s used. For example, if I only buy jeans once every other year, and an online retailer knows my buying behaviors, I’ll be grateful to get less email on a daily basis. This level of intelligence can make the buying experience much more beneficial for the end user and ultimately more economical for the retailer. I know they’ll never pass the savings on to me but you never know.

The concept of Web 3.0 is real and is coming to a store near you. My feeling is that It’s inevitable so don’t try to resist. Rather embrace the technology and learn how to best utilize it. Doing so may actually improve the buying experience.

If you are a business owner, organization, corporation, you shoudl embrace it because this is just where technology is taking us.