Author: Brittany Crockett

When you say you like a company’s brand, what do you mean? Most people, when they say brand, they mean the logo of a company. Don’t get me wrong, a logo is an important part of a company’s brand, but a brand is so much more. We believe brand encompasses four key areas. Each of these areas is sizable and has lots of opportunities for subsets of information. But today, we’re going to look at things from a bird’s-eye view. We believe a brand encompasses the business’s identity, the business’s positioning, the business’s messaging, and the business’s visual identity. Let’s take a look at each of these elements. Number one, the business’s identity. The first part of any brand is who the business is. What is the business’s mission and core values? What is the business trying to achieve? The mission talks to the bigger picture that the company is trying to solve and what they value. The core values gives the team guidance on what behavior is valued in the organization. It will direct how components of the business interact with customers, how the business interacts with the team. It will set the tone for what the culture in the organization is.

Business identity is a key component of what makes the brand of an organization and gains importance as the business puts value on the identity, making it part of the culture and potentially part of the marketing. The second part of the brand is the positioning of the business. Positioning talks about what a business brings to market and how it goes to market. Or to put another way, what differentiates it from other businesses. When we think about what a business brings to market, what we mean is, how do we make something not a commodity? What makes our product special versus our competition? How we bring it to market might also be our differentiation. Are you the only car wash in town that comes to people’s workplaces? Are you an insurance agency that has the most available markets? Are you the largest organic and natural food provider in the area? How you bring something to market and the positioning that you use are key parts of the identity. The third part of the branding is messaging. This could be viewed as the verbal identity of the business. How do we describe the organizations? Do we have specific words that we use?

What is our marketing one-liner to quickly share who we are? This also works into the tone of how we write copy for the business. The fourth part, and the one that people think the most about when they talk about branding is the visual identity. The logo is the most important part of the visual identity of the business, but there are also several other components to visual identity. One of the biggest things is what we call look and feel. Look and feel for a brand is the visual style for graphics and things like websites. They give us a uniformed visual appearance across all interaction points for a customer. A social media graphic should be able to be visually related to the website, which should be visually related to the business card. This unified visual identity is usually tied together by specific colors, typefaces, textures, or graphical elements like certain shapes or icons. A proper visual branding contains these components and a guide with all the rules on how use the visual branding. Is your business using all the elements of a brand, or do you just have a logo? Today is a great day to start developing the other elements of your brand.

A great thing is to look at companies that do branding well and start to look for all of those components and how they use them. When you start looking for them, you’re going to notice them. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Content Machine podcast. If you need help developing a brand or rebranding your company, please reach out to me at kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com.

When thinking about the customer acquisition journey, it can sometimes be a mystery how people decided to do business with you. Sometimes people describe it as a funnel. The more people hear about you, the more it’ll filter down to the people who turn into customers. And that’s a pretty good model. But a slightly different take on that, and a bit more of a relational take, is the know, like, and trust model. The know in the know, like, trust model means for someone to do business with you, they have to know who you are, they have to decide that they like you, and ultimately, they have to decide to trust you. Once they’ve decided they trust you, they will be willing to sign on the dotted line. This week we’re going to talk about the know, and then in future weeks, we’ll talk about like and trust. In the know like trust model, what does it mean to know? Very simply, it’s I know who you are or that you exist. So how do we become known? Two big thoughts, inbound and outbound marketing. Let’s start with outbound. Outbound marketing is anything that you are doing to actively get your name out there.

That might be sponsoring a local event, buying digital ads, or having a logo on the side of your truck. Outbound marketing is great for introducing yourself to people that might not know who you are or bringing you back to the top of people’s minds. Inbound marketing is when people come looking for you. It’s the experience they have on your website. It’s the content they see on your Facebook page when they come and look for you. I call inbound marketing being ready to be found. The biggest way inbound works into the no category is through things like social media and having good search engine results. We’ll talk more about inbound marketing when we talk about getting someone to like and trust you. But for now, know that if you invest in outbound marketing but do not have inbound ready to go, you are wasting your money. You have to be ready to be found, which is where steps between know and like start to bleed over. So what should we think about for outbound? One, audience, two, cost, three, brand image. When we think about audiences, we need to consider, are these the people we want to talk to?

So who do you want to talk to? Are they potential customers or are they referrers of potential customers? Are they just general potential customers? Or are they the target market that you really want to develop? Cost. Can you afford to do this? What do you think the ROI will be? Is it a one-time expense or an ongoing expense? Spending $1,000 to talk to 10 of the right people might make a ton of sense for your business. Spending the money to wrap your van might make sense, too. The cost varies by the audience and your business goals. And then finally, does this opportunity fit your brand? Even if an opportunity is with potential customers and affordable, does it make sense to align yourselves with that opportunity? This question could mean a variety of things for your brand, but things like the type of the event, the cause of the organization, or the message that the platform carries could have an effect. An example of this would be Adelsberger Marketing advertising in a traditional print newspaper. It would be an odd place to see us for a number of reasons, and it wouldn’t be a good fit.

We’ll talk more about know, like and trust in upcoming weeks. And so you need to ask yourself, are you ready to be found? Are you ready to start that relationship with a new customer? If not, send me an email at kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com and subscribe for future episodes of the Content Machine podcast.

Kevin

Welcome back to the Content Machine podcast. This week, we are joined by Roshni Patel. Roshni is the digital ad specialist here at Adelsberger Marketing, and hopefully, she will be helping us learn a few things about digital advertising that will help you in your business. Roshni, thanks for joining us.

Roshni

Thanks for having me.

Kevin

So a commonly asked question we get, Roshni is, is it better to put ads on every platform or just a few?

Roshni

Just a few. Knowing where your audience is coming from is really important, so you’re not just spending money unnecessarily. Helping determine that means you might put your ad out on fewer platforms, but you’re getting a better cost per click result.

Kevin

All right. So using this, using any of these digital advertising platforms, are there ways to filter down to that audience to see, to the people you want to see to show your ads to?

Roshni

Yes. So most platforms allow you to choose an age demographic as as well as geographical demographic. So you can narrow down who’s seeing your ads. But a lot of platforms, such as Facebook, will allow you to target ads to people who have similar interests of your business or have liked your page or interacted with your page. Therefore, you’re being more cost-effective when showing your ad.

Kevin

Okay, very good. Yeah. And a lot of that starts with understanding who your customer is, right? Yes. So that’s a key part to when we start an ad project, we want to make sure we understand who that company’s customers are.

Roshni

Exactly.

Kevin

And then we can target ads to them. There might be a a few options of platforms that target customer that we were just talking about. Is there any ad format on those platforms that you think should be utilized more?

Roshni

Yes. So in recent years, video ads have become very popular. They’re very cost-effective, but they also keep the audience engaged. So short 15 to 30 second videos are really effective. So you can create short copy for them, but really, you just want to get your main points across in that short video.

Kevin

And should you always use video or can you use graphics as well? And if you can use graphics, do you have any tips on that?

Roshni

Yes. Graphic ads are also very effective, and especially depending on who you’re trying to engage as your audience. Platforms like Facebook, it’s really smart to use very clear and concise graphics and have more information in your copy. So you want to make sure the picture is engaging but easy to read. Also creating multiple variations of that copy with the graphic is really helpful because that way the platform can see which works best against each other. So what copy is doing best out in the field as opposed to just having the one ad.

Kevin

Okay. Yeah. So when we come to the table, frequently we bring multiple versions of a graphic so that we can make sure that we’re getting the best return on the customer’s ad spend. Yeah. And then a common question we get is about how much should we spend on digital advertising, or why is my cost so click so high? And what has been your experience with that?

Roshni

So cost per click can vary depending on the customer and where they’re located as well as what their competition is. So a big factor is competition in your area. If you are a local business, for example, like a plumbing and HVAC company, you might have more competition. Therefore, your cost per click will be higher because you’re fighting to appear in those ads, in the ad space. Another really important role is your ranking. And so ranking is determined in large part by your SEO. So that’s search engine optimization. Having a high SEO ranking will help you appear faster when you’re bidding for those ads. You can also, when doing Google Ads, for example, you can put a bidding increment in there, which means that’s how much you’re willing to spend when you’re trying to appear in those ads. It doesn’t mean Google will use all that money, but it just shows how far you’re willing to go to appear, which is really helpful.

Kevin

Yeah. So you might be able to say up to a dollar per click. And if the bid goes up to 65 cents, that’s what you’ll get charged. Yes, exactly. But you’re willing to maybe spend more than the other competitors. More, if maybe. That’s right. Now, sometimes when you’re looking at Google Pay Per Click or other types of pay-per-click advertising, keywords are important. Can you tell us about what keywords are and how do they work?

Roshni

So keywords are basically phrases or words that describe your business. They’re really important because keywords help determine where your ad appears. So for example, in a search ad, if someone’s searching plumber near me, having the keyword plumber in your ad, or in your keywords, excuse me, will help your ad appear. And it also helps narrow what is shown. So if someone’s searching for a painter, a plumber won’t appear. So you’re not wasting money. Keywords should be a shorter list and more detailed rather than a longer list of just a bunch of words, because you really want to narrow what your company does and what you’re hoping to promote or sell.

Kevin

And a lot of times with keywords, one thing that we’ve seen a lot is that sometimes the meaning that you think you have for the keyword is not the meaning that the searchers are having for the keyword.

Roshni

Yes, sometimes those words are a little skewed. Yeah.

Kevin

So you got to be careful to think about ulterior meanings or if the meaning of the niche of that word may not be what you’re trying to sell is another factor to consider. Well, Roshni, thank you for your time in joining us on the episode today. If you need help with digital advertising, please get in touch with us. Send me an email at kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com, and then hit subscribe on this episode so that you can get notified of future episodes that are coming out. And we’ll see you on the next episode of The Content Machine podcast.

The biggest SEO tip we have for local businesses, make sure your Google business profile is ready to go. So what is a Google business profile and how do we optimize it? Let’s talk about it. You may have heard it called a Google My Business Profile, which is its previous name. In a nutshell, a Google business profile is one of the listings people find on Google when they look for your business. When you Google a local business on the Google Results page, you will likely see three things. One, potentially ads running for that business or for a competitor. Two, search results that hopefully show that local business, and a Google Business Profile. That Google Business Profile is Google’s effort to make sure that the business is listed correctly on Google. When people talk about search engine optimization or SEO, they are mostly meaning on Google and not necessarily other channels like Bing or Yahoo. This means that when we think about SEO, we need to think about what does Google care about. Well, using the tools that Google develops is a great way to do the things that Google cares about. All of this is why if you are a local business and you have not secured or updated your Google business profile, you are making a huge mistake.

Let’s talk about how to claim it, and if you’ve already claimed it, some things you can do to optimize your profile. To claim your profile, search for your local business on Google. You might very well see a Google business listing for your business already locatable through a Google search, and you can go through the process of claiming that listing so that you can take control of the information. That will likely involve a phone call or a piece of mail coming to your business from Google. Google has been working to make the verification process harder, however, to keep businesses legit on Google business listings. So this may take a little bit longer than you might expect it would. It can also get way more complicated if you do not have a traditional business address. If you work under an assumed business name or you don’t receive mail at your address, it becomes more difficult to get verified. Google has been then implementing things like video references to help make sure that your entity is legit. Once you have claimed your business profile, be sure to take the time to fill out all of the relevant items recommended by Google.

The business category, contact information, and things like websites should be no brainers to fill out. The first thing you want to be careful about is selecting the right category of business, whether that be a physical business or a service area business. Physical location businesses are for businesses that serve clients at their location. Service areas are for businesses that go to customers’ homes or businesses to provide that service. It’s like the difference between a traditional dry cleaner and an HVAC repair shop. Traditional dry cleaners, you must drop off your clothing, so it’s a physical location. HVAC repair companies, they come to your home or they come to your business, which makes it a service area business. But to take it to the next level and improve your listing and your visibility in the Google ecosystem, add pictures to your profile, add videos, add updates, seek out customer reviews, and then fill out any additional categories that the Google business profile has options for that fits your business. We also offer this word of warning. Google business profiles can be very touchy. Google has a propensity to suspend accounts if they think for some reason the account is being spammed or being manipulated in a way that’s spammy.

To protect yourself from this, make changes slowly. Too many changes too quickly or significant changes like name or address can flag your account for review or even get it suspended. Even things that you might not think of can get you in trouble, like be careful of how many accounts you have attached to your profile. Less is better. Also, customer reviews are great, but don’t get fake reviews. Google is not very communicative about why it might suspend your profile. From our personal experience, a client’s profile was once suspended, and the best answer we got after talking with Google was that one of the client’s emails attached to the account was flagged as suspicious. Of course, there was no reason for this, but we are at the mercy of Google like we are most of the time. Fake reviews can come through incentivizing people with money or paying for bots or offering a trade for reviews. If Google becomes aware of any of these, they can and will suspend your profile or remove it altogether. Losing a Google business profile can be a significant damage to your business. Over time, the value of your profile grows as you gain more views and relevance in search engines.

Imagine the damage to your business if suddenly no one could find you on Google at all. A final note, we suggest making a task or at least an annual calendar reminder for maintenance on your Google business profile. At least once a year, you should revisit the profile to make sure that your hours are up to date and that you’ve interacted with reviews and that nothing significant has changed on the profile, and add some new photos. This will help keep the profile relevant and make Google happy. Aren’t we all just trying to make Google happy? And one more thing about hours. Recently, a Google search business conducted a study and found that open hours for certain businesses did affect their search engine results during their closed hours. Why is that? Well, likely because Google is looking to constantly improve the way their results are shown. If you’re looking for a pizza place at 10:00 PM on a Friday, why would you want to see listings for ones that close at 8:00? The world of Google is always changing. Are you paying attention? Or do you have a partner who is? If you don’t have a Google business profile set up, you might need to talk with a marketing agency.

We’d love to chat with you. Please reach out to me at kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com to get a conversation started today.

Kevin

We’re back with the Content Machine podcast. We’re joined again by Greg Hammonds, who’s the Chief of Public Information for the Jackson Madison County School System. Greg, thank you for joining us again.

Greg

Thanks for having me.

Kevin

Tell us about what it’s like doing communications for the school system.

Greg

Some days, I feel like Tom Brady working for Bill Belichick in the heyday of the Patriots.

Kevin

Some days.

Greg

Yeah. Then some days you feel like the West 10 Diamond Jacks. It runs the gamut sometimes. But I’ll quote Dr. Catlett. He loved to say, Our worst day is still better than most people’s best day. I think there’s a lot of truth to that. It is a lot of fun. We mentioned in the first episode, Dr. King coming in, having already worked in two school systems. When you sit down at the table, he’s providing you with some context you hadn’t thought about, whether it’s from the school board level in governance, whether it’s from a personnel standpoint, working with educators, or even a marketing standpoint. I get to learn a lot, and I get to do a lot. That’s what it feels like.

Kevin

Yeah. What have been some of your challenges in this role?

Greg

Yeah. I think the challenges that come to mind… I I think a lot of folks want us to operate like it’s 1990, and it’s not.

Kevin

Internal or external folks?

Greg

External. We can no longer operate like we’re the only show in education in town.

Kevin

Okay. We can’t operate. There’s competition. Right.

Greg

So when you see our billboard downtown, that’s a good thing. We want people to know public education is a viable option in Jackson, Madison County.

Kevin

But a lot of people think there’s not competition. You don’t have to market yourself.

Greg

That’s just not true.

Kevin

Why are they spending money like this?

Greg

Yeah. So on the ride down here, down the bypass here, you pass a billboard and there’s advertising for a local independent or a private school. Parents have choices. Choice is fine. We just want to make sure people know that Jackson, Madison County Schools is a great option, and they should choose us, particularly when you think about… When you think about return on investment, I think the public school system gives the highest return, particularly when you think about in the middle, in high school areas, career and technical education, where you have students earning certificates earning, obviously, diplomas, but credentials to be able to go out. If they choose to not, let’s say they don’t want to go to Jackson State, let’s say they don’t want to go to college. Well, if you’re in the culinary program at Liberty Technology High School and you get your OSHA certification in food service, now you could go to Old Country store or a restaurant and ask for more than the minimum wage because you have training, you have experience. If you’re going to go work at one of the local garages, and you’ve come out of North Side High School or South Side High School, and you have an ASC certification, you can now ask for above minimum wage because you’re in there with experience, with a credential that’s recognized in the industry.

Greg

That’s without any type of post-secondary experience. Right off the bat, there’s their value. Let’s take it up a notch. Let’s say you are very much focused on getting a college degree. Well, you have choices. You could go to JC, Marley College High and finish your associate’s degree before you graduate high school. Literally, those students, after four years, will graduate from Jackson State Community College on a Saturday, and the next week, graduate with their high school diploma. You talk about the financial value and the time savings there, particularly if you already know college is something that you want to shoot for. But then let’s say you want the traditional option. It’s funny. My son, we attend so many games and so many events. Usually, he says, I want to go to South Side because they knew I worked at South Side, I went to school at South Side. They’ve seen my picture on the wall. My daughter, one day she’ll say this school, the next day she’ll say that school. They’re all Jackson, Madison County schools. So knowing the value at all these schools, it’s really interesting. Of course, Madison’s the cream of the crop, public or private, when you think about preparing students for college, particularly at institutions that are specifically known for academic rigor.

Greg

Madison academics are at the top. But many of our traditional options, I’ve heard of students going to a North Side or South Side, and they’ll take CLEP classes and through high school, work on different credits for college. I say that to say, if you play your cards right, JCM, Early College isn’t the only option-For college, yeah. To get those early college opportunities. And of course, Jackson Academic Esteem Academy, our virtual school, has a partnership with Union University. So the students in JASA who are juniors and seniors, they’re already working on work toward a college degree with Union University.

Kevin

So when we were talking about challenges, so you’re talking about return on investment, which is when we went into the schools. But you were talking a little bit like there’s some negative perception. What’s your strategy for overcoming that negative perception?

Greg

Truth. Tell a good story. Provide them with truth and tell a good story. And that’s not just external. We also have to remind our employees about what the school system offers. We also have to remind the employees how important they are. Today is a snow day. The roads are still severe, and so students are at home. But many, many of our teachers since last week, since last week’s snow days, have sent gentle reminders. Hey, guys. Hey, remember, read 20 minutes a day. Hey, jump on Class Dojo. Complete this assignment, read this passage, answer these questions. Hey, guys, let’s make sure we’re staying academically strong. Many, many, many of our teachers do that throughout these snow days. They say, if you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready. A lot of our teachers, Kevin, are staying ready. I know it because my own kids are in the system. But then a lot of my neighbors are teachers, too. I know the different platforms they’re using to communicate with their families. But just sharing a good message, reminding people about the benefits of public education, the fact that when our public school system is strong, our local industry is strong, our community is stronger.

Kevin

All right, so we’ve talked about some of the challenges, but let’s talk about the successes. How are things going? How do you feel like you’re doing? And I think you’ve won some hardware.

Greg

Yeah, I think you think about the best possible way to end 2023 and enter 2024. The Tennessee School Boards Association honored our school board with School Board of the Year recognition. And so that’s just a testament to the advocacy, the training, the board governance that our board’s doing. You know, it’s one thing, Kevin, to be passionate about an issue and running for a position for that issue. Yeah. Okay, but you still have to govern a school system in a number of different areas. And so what our school board members have done a great job of, getting training. The Tennessee School Boards Association offers training, in-service opportunities, and our school board members have taken advantage of this to educate themselves. You talk about lifelong learners. It’s most important in positions of leadership. Our school board has done that. And I think if you’re out in the community at all, the school board chair, Pete Johnson, unless you knew where Pete was from, you wouldn’t know where he’s from. Because Pete Johnson is throughout the school system in the schools, letting our administrators know they’re appreciated. You see them at different, whether it’s a Fine Arts event or athletic events, the school board chairman is out there.

Greg

And when the leader of your school board is doing that, you know you’re in a good situation. You have people in leadership who actually care about the product that they’re governing. When I see that, it makes me excited. I mean, it’s really cool to see because I think for so long, we didn’t have that. But to have leaders invested in the school system. Our superintendent’s son is a student in the school system. And so you just have people who have really bought in. And it’s been exciting to see. So, yeah, School Board of the Year recognition for our school board. So kudos to them. They don’t always agree, but more times than not, they come out unified. They don’t always agree, but they’re going to move forward together. And so I think as a citizen, to sit back and watch that, it’s encouraging because for the most part, they don’t let politics get in the way. And for the Tennessee School Boards Association to recognize that, that’s been really good. Of course, many, many, many of our schools have received individual awards or recognizes. By May, in May, the total number of students at JCM early College High that have graduated with an associate’s degree since 2019 will be 179.

Greg

So 179 students in Jackson, Madison County since 2019 have graduated from high school with that associate’s degree in hand. That’s just a great testament. And again, you know there are certain people you see in front of the cameras, but there are a lot of people back at the central office doing the heavy lifting and the planning to get things going. And in a few days, you’re going to hear an announcement, a major, major, major investment. You guys know about the Melissa STEM Innovation Center? A major, major investment from a private donor for Melissa’s Innovation Center. That’s coming up. I can’t spill the beans now. I’d like to. I probably can’t. I’ll just tease it and tell you that. But when you see outside entities-Investing in the public school system. Investing in the public school system. Say, Wait, wait, wait. We heard about this innovative platform you guys have for middle school students to get them experience. We know exposure is so important. Exposure in these pre-engineering in science. You think about mechatronics, you think about cybersecurity, robotics, And so the Melissa Stem Innovation Center is going to offer that for middle school students. The reason I’m excited, I fully realize not all those kids are going to go into engineering, but they’re going to matriculate to a high school with higher capacity for work in the lab, a higher capacity to complete into a study technology.

Greg

So that’s going to be a better biostem student at North Side. That’s going to be a better construction core student at South Side, a better automotive student, a better bechotronic student at JCM early College High. Those innovative programs at the middle school level is just going to make our high school programs better, and then it’s going to make our graduates that much stronger. So a ton of stuff going on. Those are two that stick out. You think about it at JCM High School this year, this school year, they started a program with Lane College. Of course, on the campus of Lane College is the CVS Innovation Workforce Center. It’s essentially Lane College working with CVS to raise up and train that next generation of pharmacists, of pharmacy techs, of health care professionals, where there are students at JCM High School that get to go to Lane College to take training in pharmacy tech. And so once those students complete that course, when they graduate from high school, they’re also going to have in their hand or certificate a credential that will allow them, allow them right out of high school to be able to work as a pharmacy tech.

Greg

When you talk about options and opportunities, Kevin, this is the tip of the iceberg. A lot of this stuff is located at jmcss.org. It’s really an exciting time to be in our school system, but none of this is possible without the employees who do the heavy lifting every day. We’re certainly appreciative of all of our teachers, all of our support staff. I was at the lift a few days ago.

Kevin

Brag about it.

Greg

I was at the lift a few, a few days ago. Snow day, so we’ve been eating more snacks. I’m just breaking even. But I saw my bus driver. So Frida Oakley was my bus driver when… Actually, I rode the bus kindergarten through high school, and I saw my bus driver, she was at the lift. It’s like seeing a family member. I know the way I feel about the folks who helped raise me. They’re another generation of kids in Madison County, and it takes a partnership. We need strong families. We also need a strong school system. Our support staff is added in that. When I think about what makes us special, truly, yes, the programs, but I think about the people, not just teachers, but also the support staff, because I just remember in my own context how important all those people were to me.

Kevin

Well, Greg, I want to thank you so much for your time in joining us on the Content Machine podcast. If people want to follow you online, where should they find you?

Greg

Well, they can find me on X, but I’m still going to say Twitter, Kevin, because-

Kevin

It’s Twitter.com still. Elon, figure it out.

Greg

@formersportsguy on Twitter. I’m also on Instagram, but I’m only there because I have to be.

Kevin

Twitter guy, though. Yeah. Me too. Solvably. All right. You can find more episodes of the Content Machine podcast on your favorite podcast player. You can find for the district podcast, too.

Greg

For the district podcast, jmcss.org/podcast.

Kevin

There you go. All right. Thanks, Greg.

Greg

Thanks, Kevin.