Foster a Culture of Content

Properly branded businesses help you stand out in a digital era. Reputation provides an immediate level of trust online and might play a large role in where you end up spending your money.

Things such as:

- Does your website look like a professional business?
- Is your logo an accurate representation of who you are, what you do, how you do it, and where?
- Is your marketing geared towards, and attracting the right type of customer?
- “How many stars?” is a question I guarantee you’ve asked.

Is your online representation working for you?

If you google search “Café Near Me” you’ll see an array of options, all essentially offering the same thing. If your goal is really just to be caffeinated, you might think they really are the same so what leads you to finally decide. Maybe it’s location, the one that’s closest to you, the quickest cup of Joe you can grab. It might also be price: do you want the cheapest or something al ittle more upscale? Your online reputation is going to be a big deciding factor in your consumer choosing you.

Properly branded businesses help you stand out in a digital era. So ask yourself: are you Starbucks, Biggby, Dunkin, and why?

If you can begin to answer those questions from a marketing perspective, you can begin to understand why branding is so important.

Third Rail of Authenticity: Electric train in Chicago. Two tracks and the middle rail where the electricity runs. Never touch the third rail. But the train won’t go anywhere without connection with that third rail. How do we attach to those things that make this team awesome? How do you encourage them in the pieces of themselves that can make a huge impact for them personally and professionally, as well as for the company? You need to show up to work and contribute in a thoughtful way. They don’t want to be a worker bee. They won’t be happy or fulfilled. Getting them to come to work with their whole selves with their talents and abilities that are outside of what they are doing. Not only an outlet for what they can use, but an outlet that we can directly connect to the success to the company in an intelligent way.

If a company has a fantastic website with all the bells and whistles you could want, and is providing the content necessary to begin connecting to their customers by filling market needs, they still need to develop their third rail of authentic expression. The third rail is the company's purpose for being; a common thread that runs throughout the organizational structure, the content, and all of its platforms. The third rail is not always visible; it is not always clear how it is providing the energy; but it is always necessary to provide the current needed to propel the train forward.

A surgeon would never show up to a surgery without a scalpel. A carpenter would not begin building a deck without a saw. A mechanic would not start working under the hood without his pneumatic tools (or at least he shouldn't). Yet, far too often, sales people walk in and out of appointments with nothing but their wit and a smile.

In reality, sales people should be well-equipped with a very specific tool set. They need to possess a coherent message, a well-defined value proposition, a good working knowledge of their competitors' offerings with corresponding key differentiators, and a digital pitch that can be used to disseminate their message to the organization's other stakeholders.

This sales toolbox, in the hands of a decent sales person, can be extraordinarily effective in the execution of sales strategy. Especially in overcoming the greatest hurdle in the B2B sales: multiple stakeholders. Yet the most some sales people can come up with is a muddled message, a vague value proposition, limited knowledge of the competition without much differentiation, and the hope their potential client will do a better job selling to internal stakeholders then they can.

Goalpost Group specializes in the development of the Sales Toolbox in order to Arm Your Champion. Regardless of what is in your toolbox today, we can help you sharpen and improve your messaging, value proposition, your competition matrix and differentiators, and create your digital pitch.

Having an internal advocate can be an amazing thing. Having a person who is willing to be a champion for you in some way can open doors, get a product or offering considered, or even get you a job. However, having someone ready to go to battle for you within their organization can be dangerous for them. Every organization has stakeholders with different objectives and varying political currencies. This is why people are often hesitant to promote ideas, people or products within their organization, even if they think highly of them. They may be forced to expand political capital or move contrary to the objectives of other stakeholders. And, as the picture to the right demonstrates, the armor they possess may not cover their rear end. As someone in need of a champion, it is crucial to make that person look good within their organization and cost them as little political capital as possible by arming them properly.

To arm a champion of this nature, you must provide them with the tools necessary to represent you in an authentic and objective way. They will help you overcome your greatest hurdle in the B2B sales when you help them cover their butts in the process.

Goalpost Group works with companies to create the Sales Toolbox needed to arm your champion by providing a digital version of your message which includes your knowledge, value proposition, and passion. Your champion can then pass these on to all potential stakeholders while remaining completely objective.

I want to talk to you really quickly about goal setting. I always like to do this by telling one of my favorite stories: that time one of my college suitemates got hit by a bicyclist. One day, my suitemate was walking across to go over to the beach. He was walking over with his girlfriend. The two of them were minding their own business, happy, and in love. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, a bicyclist smacks and hits Georgia. Georgia falls down and slams his head on the concrete. Everybody is a little bit in shock.

My suitemate’s name was Georgia, or at least that’s what we called him. We still don’t really know for sure what his name was but he was from Georgia and spoke with a deep, Georgian accent so that’s what we called him.

Now, Georgia is laying on the ground, there’s a little bit of blood coming from his head. The bicyclist is freaked out because he just hit a human being. His girlfriend is freaking out because her boyfriend just got hit by a bicyclist and whacked his head on the concrete. All of a sudden, Georgia turns around, looks at the cyclist and says, “I am FINE, SIR!” in his deepest southern drawl. And he popped up off the ground, and started sprinting in the other direction. We have no idea why he sprinted. But he sprinted away, leaving his girlfriend, leaving the bicyclist. He ran across the bridge. He ran a couple blocks inland and back to the dormitory where we lived, took the elevator up to the dormitory, and we found him about 15 minutes later with his blanket pulled up over his head in his bed.

Georgia, who clearly was out of his mind, having just had some sort of concussive situation after getting hit by a bicyclist and popping up saying “I am FINE, SIR”. He had a goal! His goal, for whatever reason, was to run as fast as he could and get to his bed because that’s where he apparently felt the safest. To this day, I don’t know why he did it. I don’t know how he set this goal for himself or why he did what he did. What I like about the story is the fact that, that’s about as much thought as most people put into the goals they that they have.

At Goalpost Group, our desire is to help our clients know their goal. And, when I say know your goal, I’m talking about helping and understanding what you want your goal to be and what good goals even are. Most people, when they’re setting goals, they’re setting things about making more money, or creating more stability, or any number of things that don’t have good ways to connect the people within the organization to that goal.

What we do at Goalpost is to assist you in knowing and understanding your goal in a way that people within your organization can connect with in a really efficient and positive manner because we believe that if you have good goals, and you strive toward them, and you connect the dots between where you are and where you want to go in a regimented manner you CAN achieve those goals. But if you’re throwing a dart at the dartboard in order to set those goals, there’s a pretty good chance that people are not going to connect with them in the way you need them to in order to achieve those goals.

So, I realize there’s a temptation to pop up off the concrete and start running. But before you decide “I am FINE, SIR”, you need to know your goal. -David McAndrews

When pitching the idea of branding, the idea can seem abstract to some people. So it’s best to create a context for how branding really works and then make it YOUR idea to invest in it.

So I may pick your known competitor and I might say, “Have you seen what fill-in-the-blank has been up to lately?” And you might say, “yes,” because it’s important you stay up to date on your competitors. I’ll say, “I wonder if they’ve seen what you’ve been up to?”

We’d love to talk to you about the ways that branding can improve your online reputation, satisfy more clients, and increase the efficiency of your sales and marketing team.

The Engagement Cycle

The Engagement Cycle is both the inbound and out engagements that you can have with your customer. This includes everything from phone calls, to emails, social media posts, to content that you post on your website. But in order for this engagement cycle to be rich and rewarding for your potential clients you need to be producing the type of content that they are going to be interested in.
If you can produce something that drives interest in your website, and then post that on an e-blast, connect with social media, and have your customers and your clients interested in that information it will pay significant dividends over time.

The engagement cycle is something that most sales people think only starts when they pick up the phone but the reality is, if you are doing it correctly 70% of the job of sales happens before that initial conversation ever happens.

Consumer behavior has changed. Consumers now are doing homework on the front end before they ever contact anybody about selling them anything. In-fact in many situations if they can avoid talking to a sales person they are going to choose that route. So why not make it easier on your clients to find the type of information that they find beneficial by producing the type of content that will answer their questions. When you answer their questions and produce the content to connect to their concerns you are diving the engagement cycle. And Driving the Engagement Cycle effectively is a significant key to success.

Remember engagement builds awareness, awareness builds interest and interest over a long period of time builds loyalty, and content drives the whole thing.

The number one attribute of a successful entrepreneur is endurance. The ability to take the process that may take years and to bite off a small chunk at a time is invaluable. We have to take things as they come. As each opportunity and setback comes in our way we are able to jump, duck or run over them. It is important when you are looking for partners in your business, that you can find someone that has the level of endurance needed to achieve your business goals.

The 3 Criteria for Content. Content should be strategic, interesting, and engaging.

A lot of people believe that posting on social media will help effect their web traffic. The reality is, if you're posting on social media and the content that you're posting does not drive a reaction to the people that are viewing it, then it's really not doing anything for you.

At its best, content should be strategic, interesting and engaging. If it is not strategic, you are not driving toward your business goal. Every piece of content needs to be produced in order to drive a customer to do something. If it's not interesting to the people that are reading it, it will just become noise. It does not have to be interesting to everyone on the planet. In fact, you should strive to make it interesting to your very specific stakeholders. If you are able to interest your very specific stakeholders and they are ready to engage with your content, that content is going to be successful. If something is engaging, that means that someone is going to want to take a next step. If they are interested enough in what you are saying to take the next step, that is really the whole goal of any content program.

So, you need to make sure when you are producing a piece of content that it is all three things: Strategic, interesting, and engaging. Otherwise, you're just wasting a lot of time.

The Magic of the Secret Sauce. The reality is that trade secrets are of little value to you as a business commodity. The trade secrets have become the secret sauce for developing content and finding a way to connect with a larger audience that is interested in the business that you do. This secret sauce is important for driving web traffic. If you have information that you are able to share and you are able to share it better then anyone else you are going to be rewarded by placement in web searches.