The Brains of the Outfit

I was talking to an executive from a background check company that had been acquired by one of my clients, who is trying to make a decision about how to deal with the acquired brand – basically, keep it or roll it into the current brand as a product line.

During this conversation I asked the exec what he thought should be done. His response was “Well, there are some of our brands that have some brand equity – we have websites and good rankings on Google.”

Before I get endless comments about the importance of a good website and SEO, understand that I both realize and believe that SEO is important, and a good website is important. However, neither of these things directly equate to brand equity. Are they influencers? Certainly. Are they enough to create brand equity by themselves? Nope.

First, brand equity as a concept is widely misunderstood. True brand equity is the financial value of your brand. There are a variety of measurements that are used to yield this value, but they all have to do with your brand as an asset. What most people are talking about when they speak of brand equity is visibility. And brand visibility is an influencer of brand equity. A highly visible brand with positive brand associations will likely have more equity than a similar brand with less visibility.

SEO and a good website will certainly help create visibility, but what about the other piece – positive brand associations? Where do those come from?

Another client of mine just illustrated this perfectly. Charted Path, LLC is a start-up organization, and the owner, Mike Cleland, literally just got off the phone with me about 5 minutes ago to tell me that he realized what I’ve been trying to help him with all along – building his brand through both traditional marketing and getting his feet (barely) wet in social media. His website and blogging efforts are paying off, but only because his brand is authentic, and can survive social media transparency. He very quickly has built positive brand associations by establishing himself as an expert in his field through his website and blog, but also through positive client interactions on the projects he’s completed. (Of course, it probably doesn’t hurt that he’s a genuinely nice guy who truly knows what he’s talking about.)

Mike has a nice website, and is currently doing reasonably on Google ranking. But those things aren’t brand equity. The combination of those things and positive brand association are helping him create brand equity.

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I love articles like this one. I think Kievman has missed the point of doing social media for business and of marketing in general.

Marketing is about ROI.

If companies haven’t been able to find the real-world results of their social media efforts, there are two distinct possibilities. Either they’re not doing social media effectively, or they’re not measuring it correctly.

I’d be willing to bet that DemingHill’s largest Fortune clients care about ROI as the first thing of importance, but they understand that all the activities that Kievman mentions in this article are tied to strategies that bring measurable ROI.

Relationship building creates ROI by creating brand equity and increasing net promoter score. Kievman mentions “creating communities of key constituents.” Why do you do that? Those key constituents are either going to be influencers or buyers. Another point Kievman misses is that customer service, brand monitoring, brand awareness, and crisis management can all be performed or influenced via social media.

This statement is really problematic to me: “…if you are not converting outside of social media, social media will not help you convert and improve your ROI.” If an activity has a net zero effect, that’s truly money for nothing. The whole raison d’etre of marketing is to increase conversion. Does it have to be direct? No – very few marketing activities are direct.

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I presented Using Social Media to Build Your Business to the Roswell, Georgia Kiwanis. Great group, and they had a bunch of future Kiwanis from the Roswell High School Key Club. Definitely a good time. A video excerpt is below:

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First, a nod to the Geto Boys for the title of this post.

For those of you not familiar with rap, what the title infers is that it’s good to be able to do what you like, with all that entails. If you want a great example of that, check out the 1999 movie Office Space directed by Mike Judge.

What it means to me is that validation is a great thing. I just came from a social media for business seminar put on by a very large agency here in Atlanta, and about halfway through realized I could have easily put on this same seminar. We are currently doing for our clients, albeit on a smaller scale, everything that this well-know name in social media marketing talked about.

In fact, this social media maven could well have pulled some of his material right from my last blog post. It was great hearing that we’re doing the same activities in essentially the same way as this guy who could probably purchase this company with his last year’s salary!

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