fashion branding - Horne Isle Productions - Internet Marketing Tutorials

Five Tips to Branding Yourself #1: Define your brand and become an expert. ... #2: Establish a presence. ... #3: Generate brand awareness through networking. ... #4: Remember the 3 Cs of branding. ... #5: Get feedback from those who know you best—at work, at home, anywhere. In this video, we’re going to talk about the keys to branding yourself and branding your business. Especially in today’s world of social media, it’s very, very important for you to consider how the perception of your brand and your company and just of yourself is affecting people’s willingness to follow you and ultimately buy from you. We see this in politics all the time. Yes, I am going to talk about some of the most colorful characters on the political scene, but the reality is that it requires a surgical strategy. What I mean by that is — it’s not a blunt strategy that you can execute with like blunt tools, this is a surgical strategy that you really have to carve out with a scalpel. You have to really, really consider what you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it, what you’re going to say, when you’re going to say it, and not just that but who you’re going to say it to, who you’re going to do it to. All of these things are very, very important. I’m going to talk about a surgical strategy to build an audience in even the most hostile marketplace. It applies to pretty much any industry. The basic things that I’m going to talk about here, we’re going to try and break them down. It’s five key things. It’s awesome because I actually got these five key things from a video that analyzed a political campaign. Remember, I said I’m going to talk about the most colorful characters in politics. The Essential 5 Keys To Branding Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?vIAwCgeZdvn8 The video that I’m referring to be the one that talked about the marketing genius and the Donald Trump campaign and how all of a sudden out of nowhere, this guy who’s in the 1% of America that everybody just kind of hates because we’ve just become this culture of people that the administration that we’ve had for the last 8 years just kind of told us, “No, rich people are terrible. They’re bad. It’s terrible that they own companies and that they’re at the top of the 1%. They’re terrible for you. They’re homophobes.” Anyway, it’s just been very, very, negative publicity for anybody in the 1%. We saw people on wall Street where they just went, and they just stood out there and were just protesting. We’ve seen all the anti-bailout stuff and it’s just been a culture that’s been developed over the last 8 to 10 years here in this country where the general public, ha become very, very, polarized. The middle class has shrunk. This has created a very hostile market. When I say market, I’m looking at it from the eyes of a politician. The market is the audience that he has to capture, that’s what we call the market. That is where we go and we brand through demographics. It’s very important to consider that the political market is very, very, hostile. It is very polarized. You have the poor, and then you have the rich, you have the wealthy. In between, the middle class has been shrinking every single year. Now, what happens is when you are a politician, if you’re going to win, you got to get both of those demographics on your side. In a political market where everybody has just been hating on the wealthy and the 1% for so long, how can a guy like Donald Trump, a 1% himself, a billionaire, how can he actually be poised to actually win? How is that possible? How does he get such high ratings in the polls? How does he win the nomination? How is this even possible? Well, it’s important to consider that the reason that a lot of people get elected to public office even though they’re not qualified, it seldom has anything to do with policy or principles, that’s not what gets them there, it’s marketing. You can shake your fist at me all you want, this is reality and I hope that you can appreciate it. The Obama administration, when they first got into office, in the history of presidential elections, they were the most technically savvy campaign in history. Their email marketing was off the hook. Their social media was off the hook. Obama surrounded himself with the right people to market his campaign. I’ve read articles about all the hundreds of split-tests that they did on email subject lines during the campaign to get as many open rates, to raise the money, to get the actual donations the they needed to be able to pay for the campaigning that put him in office. I remember reading an article about a split-test and the winning subject line was the word hey. HE-Y. I just found that it’s fascinating how a presidential campaign was split-testing email subject lines and that that particular subject line got so many open rates which turned into so many donations which actually help to put the president into office and I just thought it was amazing. I get very excited about marketing in these kinds of hostile environments and actually persuading people to come on your side. When we look at what’s happening with the Trump campaign, it makes what Obama did pale by comparison. You might say Obama’s a much more likable guy than Trump. How the hell does this guy have the following and how he’s been able in such a short time to knock out 17 other potential nominees and to do that, well it’s the marketing. It’s not the policies and the principles, it’s the marketing. Building a business similarly requires an audience and obviously building an audience requires a strategy, a surgical type of strategy not much unlike what has been recently executed here at the time that I recorded this video by Donald Trump and his campaign. It’s important that we analyze it. You guys know how I feel about politics. I’m conservative at heart. I’m registered as an independent voter. The purpose of this video isn’t to try to sway you either way. You might be a Sanders supporter, you might be a Clinton supporter, you might be an Obama person. I respect your decision and I’m very proud to live in a country where we all have these options to decide who we want. I personally do not like any of those candidates that I just mentioned. I’m definitely not liberal. This video here is to acknowledge the specific things that are working and just like I just mentioned, the brilliance in the Obama campaign when it came to the marketing strategies, the social media strategies, the retargeting, the advertising, the fund-raising that happened. I’m similarly going to talk now about the brilliance in the Trump campaign and the things that he’s been able to do. The smart marketers that are watching this video will learn from these strategies, apply them to your audience and really capitalize on this thing. At least something good came from the whole Trump campaign. Five keys to branding. This was inspired by a video that I saw online. It was on YouTube, it was a 15-minute video where the speaker broke down all the little things and actually used clips to demonstrate how Donald Trump was doing all of these things. I wish I had the link to that video right now but I don’t at the moment but I’m sure if you Google it you can find it. The first thing that he attributed was getting attention. Regardless of what market place you’re in, you’re not the only one there, because if you’re the only one there then you’re actually creating the market place. I don’t recommend that you do that in business. Creating a market place is very time consuming and it’ll chew up all of your capital. You want to jump in into existing market place where people are already there, they’re already buying, they’re already spending money and you want to go and establish yourself as an expert there and try to pull as many of those people to you. How are you going to do that? You’re going to do that by building a brand. How are you going to start brand yourself? You’re going to get attention. That’s how are you going to do it. You have to get everybody’s attention. How do you get somebody’s attention in a crowded market place? You do something that everybody else isn’t doing, obviously. The people that are doing the same thing as everybody else, they blend in with the crowd. The people that do the opposite of everybody else or something significantly different than everybody else, they’re the ones that stand out, they’re the ones that get attention. With that, you have to be willing to suffer the slings and arrows that come with said attention. Initially, people that see you standing out—you’re going to be met with controversies, not everybody’s going to welcome that behavior with open arms because you are dis-conforming, you are going away from the crowd. But here’s the thing, crowds can be won over. If you’re consistent, what’ll happen is you’ll actually start winning people over to your side but initially you will have pushback because you’re different. People are going to look at you and they’re going to be like, “Oh my god, that’s an outsider. He’s not one of us anymore. He’s somebody different.” They’re going to be afraid, they’re going to push back. But as they say see, you’ll see that one will join you, two will join you and as the group grows, as the audience grows, more and more people will be attracted to that group, to that tribe, these are just basics of human nature, these are basics of sociology. This is not me talking out of my ass. The reality is that human beings, were hunter gatherers by nature. We form tribes, we assemble in groups. It is not in our nature to be hermits by ourselves. As we start standing out from a crowd and getting attention; let’s say, you’re the one that stands out in a crowded bus and screams and yells and starts dancing. All of a sudden everybody’s looking at you and they’re like, “Oh my god, what the hell’s wrong with this guy? What is he, freaking nuts? Geez.” But you keep doing it. You’re not bothering anybody, and you’re not hurting anybody and you’re dancing. Before you know it, one person is smiling in there, laughing. Eventually, you’re going to win somebody over and they’re going to join you and now all of a sudden, it’s two people that are doing it. Now, more people are looking like, “Oh my god, well, two people can’t be crazy.” The third guy joins you and before you know it, you got the half of the bus on your side. If you’re good at this, eventually, everybody’s starts dancing on the bus. Why? Because you no longer have to recruit because the other people are doing the recruiting for you. This all starts from you getting that attention, from you being different. Some people might say, “Well Omar, getting attention requires controversy or it requires being controversial.” You’ve heard it said many times, bad publicity, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. It really comes down to how willing are you to suffer the slings and arrows of being in the spotlight. A lot of people aren’t comfortable with being looked at. A lot of people don’t want anyone to look at them. They want to live in a bubble. They want to be able to walk in public and nobody, “Oh my god, is he looking at me? Oh my god, did he just looked at me?” They don’t want to attract attention. You know what? Those people will never hold public office. Those people will never do any kind of public speaking or do anything unless they break out of that comfort zone. Getting attention means you’re going to have to suffer the slings and arrows of being judged by people. I don’t give a shit what reality you think you live in, the reality that the rest of us live in is one that judges us. We are judged based on our appearance, we are judged based on what we say, we are judged. In your little perfect world of rainbows and uniforms that people don’t judge each other, that everybody’s equal regardless of anything—the real world isn’t like that. If you’re going to stand out of the crowd, you’re going to be judged. People are going to look at you because now you’ve got their attention. They’re looking at you and they’re going to be like, “Oh, look at that guy. Wow, the nerve of him standing up and dancing like that. Oh my god, he’s disturbing me. Do you see what he’s wearing? The nerve.” That’s how initially you’re going to get pushed back. In business, you have to be willing to suffer those slings and arrows. If you’re not willing to take the negative reviews with the good reviews and understand that there just needs to be a balance where those negative ones are lower than the positive ones, and initially they’re not going to be. You might not be very well received when you’re the odd ball, when you’re the one that’s stirring up the pot. As long as you’re willing to suffer that, and go through that and push through that, you’re going to be able to stand out significantly and you’re going to be able to attract a crowd. Now that you're attracting the crowd, I think it’s important to identify that there is not just one audience but there is a shit load of audiences. There’s a lot of different people to cater to within the audience. When we’re talking about the political market, I mean oh my goodness I can’t think of—it’s such a broad market. You’re talking about the entire population of a country and the presidential election we’re talking about here. The entire population of a country above the age of 18 which is—that’s your potential market. You’re talking about millions and millions and millions of people and there are people from all walks of life. There are people on all different places in the social economical scale from ditch diggers to doctors. You’ve got people from all different backgrounds and heritage and culture and things like that. You’re not going to be liked by everyone. There are going to be cultural differences that are going to separate you from people. No matter how politically right or how much you want to argue it with me, it’s just the fact and you’ve got to deal with it. It’s the fact of life. When we’re talking about public relations, when we’re talking branding, when we’re talking image, the way you look, where you’re from, what you say, all of that plays a role in the perception that people have of you. You’re going to hear me use the word perception a lot. The key is to win one audience at a time, one at a time. You want to know what is the quickest way to fail at building your brand? The quickest way to fail at getting elected, the quickest way to fail at establishing an audience and getting people to buy from you is to try to make everybody happy at the same time. You can’t, because you’re spreading yourself through thin. People will see right through your political correctness and for the lack of a better word, they’re going to see right through your bullshit because you’re pretending to be something you’re not with this crowd just so you don’t offend that crowd. People can see right through you. It’s the typical traditional politician kind of demeanor that we’ve come to accept. A politician is a lying politician just like lawyers are sharks, politicians are liars because they lie to try to make everybody happy. They tell every single audience what they want to hear. When they’re talking to the older, people yeah we’re not going to cut social security.” When they’re talking to the younger people, “Yeah we’re going to give you free education.” Or when talking to the people in the middle, “Yeah, we’re going to cut taxes.” That same guy will say contradicting things to every single one of those audience at the same time, in the same speech even. That is the biggest way to be called out on your bullshit because people aren’t stupid. They can see through that. They can sense that you’re not being genuine. At the same time, you might say, “Omar, I don’t want to offend anyone.” You know what? When you’re in the public view, if you know me personally, you know my social image is one that I frankly don’t give a shit. If you get offended by something I say, that is a subjective emotion that you need to deal with and not me. But, I can understand if you’re saying, “Look, I’m representing my company and my brand and I don’t want to take any sort of political stand or I don’t want to take any sort of religious stands or I don’t want to make any kind of statements that might push away any demographic.” Okay, I get it. I understand. Here’s the thing though, you need to build one audience at a time to be effective and to get them on board and make them feel that you’re catering to their needs, their desires. If you try to cater to everybody, you’re going to fail. How does this pertain to politics? Well in politics, it might be we’re talking to the baby boomers or we’re talking to the college grads or we’re talking to the middle income people and we’re going to talk to them about their concerns to win them over individually. We might be talking on the immigration issue, we might be talking to naturalized citizens as opposed to talking to second and third generation Americans. The speech, the audience, the things that you’re going to say are going to have to vary by who you’re saying them to and what time you’re saying them. That’s how we would win one audience at a time in politics. How do you do that in business? How do you do that when you're building your brand online? How do you build one audience at a time? You know what? You’re going to have to talk to people differently. If you’re selling a software, if you’re trying to recruit customers, if you’re trying to build a following and you have a software company, you’re going to talk to baby boomers differently than you’re going to talk to college grads. Why? Because baby boomers are much older. They’re in the 60s and the 70s. You’ve got college grads in their 20s and they’re very tech savvy, they’re millennials. They grew up in the age of iPhones, they grew up in the age of computers, some of your baby boomers remember when they first got a TV. They grew up in the era of TV. My mom remembers when it’s just radio. There was no TV. You’re going to present your software ideas differently. It’s not that the actual software itself changes just like the immigration issues don’t change. The actual thing that you’re talking about doesn’t change but the way that you’re going to attract that audience definitely has to change. You have to win one audience at a time. If on the same sales page you’re trying to dumb down the explanation of that software to appeal to the non-tech savvy baby boomer, you’re going to lose the millennial that wants to know more tech savvy answers. If you just catered that sales message and that sales copy to that millennial, you’re going to lose that baby boomer because the things that you’re talking about went right over your head, telling them to go to the app store and download the app and find it on iTunes and this, that. They’re going to be like, “What? What’s he talking about? What is an app? Is that an application like you’re applying for a job? They don’t know. They don’t get it. You gotta understand that these are audiences that you have to win individually. The cool thing is now, we can do this. We can do this very effectively with social media marketing because on Facebook, we can actually segment our ad audiences by age, by gender, by geo code, where do they live, where are they from. You can learn a lot about an area. You can learn the political leanings of an area. If you think area doesn’t have anything to do with it, you’re wrong again because like I said, we are hunter gatherers by nature. We are pack animals, we stick together even if you look at the geography of a city. There’s a Chinatown, little Italy. The people from similar places kind of stick together even when they leave their own country, they form neighborhoods. When I was selling door to door and I was selling pizza coupons, I loved going into Indian neighborhoods. Why? Because Indian cultures, there are a lot of vegetarians that love eating pizza. I would sell more pizza coupon books in Indian neighborhoods than I could in any other neighborhoods. The other places that I use to sell like crazy is in the ghetto, in the projects. I would go in there. Why? Because it’s very affordable and people that have a low income eat a lot of pizza. I would love going to the ghetto with my pizza coupon book and they would love receiving me. You see how geography has a lot to do with it as well. We’re marketers and we’re in the business of identifying these differences and capitalizing on them so that we could properly persuade the audience. We attract the right people at the right time and we can properly persuade them. Let’s talk about the third one. Remove threats. You’ve got to remove threats one at a time. When it comes to the political angle, we see what Donald Trump did is right away, when Donald Trump came on the scene, he had to remove—I think there was 17 candidates running for the nomination in the Republican Party. He had to remove the most dangerous threat right away, Jeb Bush. That was the most dangerous—just because of the name. Just because of the name Bush, he was the biggest threat that he had. Donald Trump went on the attack. He didn’t worry about Marco Rubio, he didn’t worry about Ted Cruz or any of those people in the beginning, he just went after Bush. He discredited Bush, he debated, he directed all his points, his message, everything he was talking about was Jeb Bush, he removed that threat, he went away. How do you do this in the online space? I see this in the online space as not necessarily taking out your competition but how about taking out the apprehensions, how about hitting all your potential objections upfront and getting rid of them one at a time. Putting yourself in the shoes of that potential buyer, what is his or her concerns, what is it that could stop them from buying this product or from voting for me, what is it, how do I eliminate it, how do I remove that consideration from the table? Let me address that issue. I’ve already gotten their attention, I’ve already got the audience paying attention. Now, I got to remove the threats. I’ve got to address the things that could possibly pull these people away from me and how am I going to do that? In branding and building a tribe, you’re going to do that by forming camaraderie. I remember when I was doing the door-to-door sales thing, there was this culture within the business where anybody that wasn’t in the business, or anybody that they were just like, “Oh my god, those people are like yeah that is a 95.” We used to call them cows. We used to call regular people cows. It was just the culture in the office. We’re door-to-door people, we’re commissions salespeople, we’re hardcore, we go out there, we work our asses off. Regular people can’t do this, they’re cows, they’re C-OW-S, corporate office working slobs. That’s almost like you’re indoctrinated to believe that and to talk that way. There’s this culture that kind of separates the threat or those people because as a door-to-door sales person you deal with a lot of rejection and that company doesn’t want you to have a bad day and get too many door slams and then quit. They create this negative image on quitters, “Oh my god, if you quit, you’re terrible. You’re nothing but a corporate office working slob. You’re going to go in and you’re go into buy in the system that you’re going to work 40 hours a week for 40 years and then retire on half of what you’re already making and now you’re one of those people.” It almost makes it like a bad thing to go out and get a regular job that pays you salary instead of commission. I understood the whole dynamic but this is indoctrination that we’re talking about. They removed that threat by forming this culture. How do you that in your audience? Well, you build this tribe, you stay in communication with them, you can even create your own vernacular, you’ve got to stay constantly in touch with them and you’ve got to make it so that anybody outside of that group, “When you’re in this group, when you’re part of us, you’re awesome, you’re excellent, you couldn’t have made a better decision. You’re protected. Oh my god, that guy left the group. What was he thinking? Now he’s going to have to deal with all his negative stuff, with all the adversity.” It’s bad to not be in the group. It’s good to be in the group. We take care of the group. You’re going to lose all of these if you leave the group. We got to remove any kind of threat that you might have. What about objections to your actual product? We want to remove those. If that’s a potential like for example, “You know what? I’m selling a software. My software doesn’t do XYZ but that other software does do XYZ. But did you know that that software, they were accused of having stolen the code and did you know that they also don’t have a warranty and did you know that we did these 10 things right in that day and that they don’t…” I’m not saying that that’s what you should do. I’m actually not a big proponent of those side by side comparisons or actually having to use that other person or product in your own marketing at all. You should be able to do your own things about your own product on its own merits but we’re not talking about the average marketplace here. We’re talking about hostile environments. We’re talking about hostile marketplace, the type of marketplace that that other competitors are probably going after you just because you joined the market place and you want to take a little piece of that pie. Again, removing threats one at a time, a very important part of retaining that audience which is really what we’re talking about. It was so hard to get their attention and build them and attract them, you don’t want to lose them. Defining the terms in your favor so that you’ve already won. When you’re branding yourself, when you’re attracting an audience, when you’re going to win people over on certain points, no different in politics than it is in business. There are certain bullet points, there are certain features, benefits about being part of your company, being part of your product that you need to win people over as opposed to them being part of somebody else’s brand or somebody else’s product. I say it all the time because you might say, “Omar, there’s room for everybody.” Okay. You just want to satisfy your customer. Let me tell you something, satisfied customers will buy from anyone. Loyal customers will only buy from you and that’s what you should be striving to do. You should be striving to create loyal customers, not striving to create satisfied customers. Anybody could satisfy the customer. Just give them what you told them you’re going to give them. It’s not enough. You have to delight the customer and that’s how you’re going to create loyal customer and the same holds true politics as it does in business. You define your terms so that you’re already—for example, the way Donald Trump did this, Donald Trump actually made issues when he jumped on the scene. He started talking about stuff that nobody was talking about. He started talking about immigration. He’s very strong in immigration. It’s a topic that he’s good at. He obviously didn’t come in and started talking about foreign policy because that’s not something that he’s strong on. He started talking about that and he made that an issue, he literally created an issue out of that intentionally. Intentionally, he actually created an issue. Some people might say he made very polarizing statements about Hispanics. If you play them back, there’s nothing racist about the statements, however, the reality though is that he was catering to a specific audience. He is trying to, at the time he made those statements the people find polarizing against Hispanics, at the time he made those statements, he was trying to win the Republican nominations in specific states. I guarantee you that the amount of Mexican voters in those states were insignificant and we want to build one audience at a time. I assure you now that he’s won the nomination, and he’s won those votes, he’s probably going to shift gears. Again, you can tell that this video is dated at the time that I recorded it. We’re still in the primary. Well, he’s already gotten the nomination, has not actually been elected yet. How does this all relate to business? In business, you’ve got to define the terms. If we’re talking about video marketing, let’s say you have a video player, let’s say that’s your product and you’ve come on the scene with a new video player and there’s already existing action in that market. People are buying video players all the time. Some people are very happy with their video player, others are shopping, others have no idea what a video player is. You’ve got one audience at a time. How are you going to be seen as that expert? You’re going to define the terms. You’re going to pick the best freaking part of your video player and you’re going to make an issue on that. For example, let’s say the best thing about your video player is the fact that it rolls in. It has an animated entrance. When people press the play button, the video player actually animates itself and spins and captures people’s attention. Let’s say that’s a feature. I’m just pulling this out of the hat here, that might not be a good example. Let’s just say that that’s the crazy feature that your product has. How do you define the terms in the marketplace that favor you? Well, you create the issue about how video players that don’t have this engaging introduction and engaging entrance, they’re not effective. They’re not effective because video players that do have it gain much more responsiveness. You create the issue about how some businesses have failed and they’ve been using video players that don’t have this engaging entrance. You create the whole campaign, your entire campaign is all about the video player entrance which is a topic that you’re very strong on because your product has it and all those other products don’t have it so you create an issue. You are defining the terms of the campaign, that publicity. People are going to start asking questions about animated players. They’re going to create support tickets at their player. They’re saying, “Hey, how come I can’t get it to animate?” They’re going to create those issues and that company is going to have to go back and say, “Well, that’s not a feature that we offer.” Right away what are they going to think in their head? “Oh, shit. That video player that Omar has, they offer that.” Instantly, they’re better. Why? Because I defined the terms in my favor so that I’ve already won. I’m putting those other players on the defensive. This is a tactic that works very, very, well. People use it in debate, people use this in persuasive conversation. They define the terms in their favor. They lay out and create an issue and dictate the terms in the discussion and the debate and the argument based on something that they’re very strong in, based on the subject that they’re very strong in. This is something that Obama is very good at doing—but again, I digress. Whether you’re selling a video player or you’re selling an ebook, or you’re selling a product, you need to define those terms yourself because it’s literally your job to assert yourself as an expert in the industry and how better to do that than to point out and to actually lay the foundations and say, “Look, this is an awesome feature. You need this feature. This is something that you need and I challenge you to find somebody else that’s doing this right. We do this the best. Nobody does this better.” You define those terms. You actually created that issue of discussion. Here’s the other thing. You’ve got to be flexible. Like I mentioned earlier, in the beginning parts of the campaign when he’s trying to get the Republican nomination, he had to cater to the needs and desires and the wants of those republicans. Now that he’s got to appeal to a much bigger audience at the time that I recorded this video, now he’s got to start winning over the minority vote. He’s got to start bringing over those split voters. People that were Bernie Sanders fans, they hate Hillary because Bernie and Hilary had terrible bickering and badgering going back and forth. Hillary supporters hate Bernie supporters, Bernie supporters hate Hillary supporters. It’s not really interchangeable. Now, Trump has to come in and he’s got to be flexible. He’s got to go and rally those audiences. Now we’re going to start a lot of liberal comments, statements and positions being asserted by this guy. How exactly are we going to do that? Well, how do we do this in business? How do we be flexible based on whatever’s going to rally the audience? Well, you need to understand the market and their needs. You need to know who you’re talking to if you’re going to rally that audience. You need to be flexible and you need to realize, “If I want to go to after the baby boomer crowd, they could give a rat’s ass about animated intros. They don’t care about whether the player shakes and rolls around on the screen before the video plays, these people need something else. If I’m going to win them, they’re going to need to learn how to use video or how to record a video. Maybe I have to include a video training course on how to use a video or how to upload your video or something like that. Maybe I have to make a quick start guide.” You have to be flexible. Remember, you want to win one audience at a time but you have to win multiple audiences. One audience alone isn’t going to get you the—definitely not in the political arena, in business, you can in fact capitalize by continuing to sell new products, different products to one audience over and over and over again as long as you continue attracting new people. Don’t ever, ever, ever, ever worry about over-saturation. I hate it when people think that small. There’s new people being born into the economy every single day. You’re never going to have an oversaturation problem in business, in commerce, of any kind whether on the internet there’s millions and millions. I guarantee you, you will never reach a position in your industry where every single person has been sold and now you’re going to change industries. That’s never going to happen, don’t even consider that. You have to be flexible, you have to attract multiple audiences. You got to do one audience at a time, you got to remove your threats. It all starts with not being afraid to be that person that’s different, that stands out, that gets the attention. There’s risk involved. You’ve got to become comfortable with risk. If you want to be a business person if you want to be successful, if you want to make money, you have to take risks and that means sometimes being the person that dances on a crowded bus. Remember, perception is reality. The way people think about you, the way they perceive you is going to determine whether or not they like you, follow you, or buy from you. We do not live in a fairytale utopia where people do not judge you. Put that shit out of your head, you are in marketing. Image is everything in marketing, everything. I’ve got people on my Facebook in the past, we’ve gotten into the discussion on my wall, I’m a pretty controversial figure on Facebook. I remember distinctly having a discussion about whether or not you would hire someone to work at your store that had a whole bunch of facial piercings and just very different. A very different person. It was funny to see how diverse the answers were. So many people were like, “Yes, that doesn’t matter. I judged somebody—?” You know what? The public at large is not going to have those same values, the public at large is going to be judgmental about appearance. They’re going to be judgmental about hygiene, they’re going to be judgmental about appearance. If the person that you’re hiring is for the purpose of welcoming your customers and greeting them, you want somebody that is going to be pleasant, somebody that is going to be well-received by the masses, not just by a very small slice of the social economic scale. Sure, that guy with a bunch of piercing might appeal very well to a small piece of that scale but if you own a public business that you’re going to have them greeting people from all walks of life, you’re going to need to have somebody that’s going to be “inoffensive,” that’s going to be “unintrusive” to any of those cultures. That’s very, very important. That is the world we live in and this is the industry that you’re doing business in, or rather marketing is very, very, important to any industry that you’re doing business in. People are judgmental. Your audience is judgmental. They’re going to think about you in a certain way. The cool thing about this is that you can control that. You can persuade that. You can use these five things that we’re talking about to make that audience your bitch, so to speak. To make them do what you say to persuade them to follow you and not to leave you. Always seek to create a perception of value in the eyes of your potential audience. I always say to people in business, especially now in the days of social media, you need to provide value first. Long gone are the days of marketing with the yellow pages where they just go and starts with the A’s and they find a service they need, they call the phone. That’s not the way that it is now. People now are reading reviews. People now have the internet on their hip. You know what? People now, it’s so easy for them to look things up and find reasonable competitors and actually price shop and things like that. The world is totally different right now than it was 10, 20 years ago because of the internet. The internet’s made the world a smaller place. It’s created a communication boom that makes the industrial revolution pale by comparison. As a marketer, as a business owner doing business in this digital world, you need to understand that. How do we separate ourselves from all of the competitors? Well, you become a person of value by providing value first. Before you’ve won that customer, offer valuable information, material, tools for free. Offer without a commitment. Without an obligation. What happens is these people will now start becoming attracted to you, they will start pooling in your aura, they will start becoming part of your tribe. Those are the people that you win over, those are the people that you create a painful disconnect with if they’re going to leave, those are the people that end up recruiting more people for you. You’ve got to be a person of value in the eyes of your potential audience. I hope that you’ve gotten a lot of value out of this presentation here that I’ve done. I tried to nail two things together that I’m very interested in and very passionate about and that is politics and marketing. I think that there are a lot of lessons to be learned in the political—in everything that’s happening. Sometimes, I know we get emotional about political issues and we got sucked into what we’re seeing in the media. You got to be very careful with that. I choose to learn from what I’m seeing. I choose to analyze the tactics that are being used and I chose to find a way that I can apply those to better serve my community, to better become a person of value, and to better improve my financial situation. I want to thank you for watching this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. Take care. External Links For Horne Isle Productions – Internet Marketing Lessons