See also: Cialdini’s six principles to influence your website reader

Rule in marketing

The things is that – you can influence what people say about you, but you can’t own the conversation. So your mission is to enable your marketing team to embrace the dialogue dynamic. The other thing is that  people no longer is driven by the perceptions of products, more than that they are driven by the perceptions of company. That means that your goal is to create unique brand experience, use all possible innovations appeared on social media and try to personalize your interaction.

Rule in sales

Don’t concentrate on your products/services, concentrate on understanding your customers’ unique challenges. Help them to solve their problem or reach a goal and they are yours. 57% of buying decisions are made before buyers’ interaction with sales. So your task is to connect with them earlier to shape their vision, to create pleasant buying experience and guide them through their journey – give them guidelines what they should do.

Rule in service

Your mission is to know about your customer more than he knows about you. Keep aware what he need and prefer from you. Also, always try to enhance customers’ satisfaction with a world-class experience. Make sure, you add value to every interaction to the customer and enhance customers’ loyalty by doing everything efficient.

See also: 4 best techniques to enhance productivity

So with these techniques you basically not only try to attract customers, but more than this you try to make them your personal promoters. That’s the main goal and if you reach it, you will see the amazing results quite fast!

But what is the growth hacking?

To understand the definition let’s compare it with the traditional marketing. In the traditional way of the marketing in a classic company, the marketer receives a budget and it is his function to build brand awareness.

In the growth marketing it is different and simpler, growth the number of the paying users while minimizing marketing costs.

The word “hacker” used in this situation stands for a person who uses unconventional means for a purpose. So use unconventional means to growth the number of users.

Some examples of the growth hacking

Hotmail:  a simple and innovative way tolet know their service. Put at end of each email send the sentence; “PS: I love You. Get your free email at Hotmail.”

Dropbox: create at begin a video with well-known memes and shared it in reddit which make growth the number of first users. But then, the little detail was to offer more storage space for each friend sponsored.

Twitter: The social network work on the activation retention. An user which follow 20 persons is considered an active user and start to use the network regularly. So they work to incorporate the process of following people when you sign.

This special distinction was received by Sogrape CEO, António Oliveira Bessa, who thanked the organization “such a prestigious distinction”.

He also highlighted the “enormous pride felt by all employees of Sogrape” and his “commitment to pursue the mission of putting Portuguese wines in a prominent position in the international context.”

This year, the 20th edition of the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles had more than 8,000 wines for proof, appreciated by a panel of 300 judges from around the world, including journalists, buyers, winemakers, etc.

Sogrape is known for Mateus Rosé, Barca Velha and its Oporto Wine, Ferreira, which wine cellars you can visit in Oporto.

Marketing is one of the most popular career destinations for newly qualified graduates. And it is easy to see why. In the digital age, marketing and technology are often described as the engine room of a business. It offers an exciting and often highly paid job for those who desire a dynamic business career.

The great thing about marketing is it is a function that is needed in every company in every industry, so career potential is unlimited.

Regardless of the specific marketing position, there are some basic skills and interests that marketing professionals should possess.

Marketing professionals can expect a diverse, dynamic work experience, with new challenges emerging each day. Very few marketers describe their work as “boring” or “routine”. Marketers should also expect a fast-paced, often challenging environment, with numerous internal and external pressures. Workweeks typically range from 50-70 hours. Travel is a job requirement, whether to a field sales office, manufacturing facility, customer account, advertising agency or to supervise local market research. The level of travel varies, but expect a few days of travel a month.

To assess whether or not marketing is right for you, ask yourself if you have and enjoy using the following skills:

–          Initiative: Ability to accomplish complex projects and tasks with minimal assistance.

–          Leadership/Management: Lead and motivate people from different departments, and provide visionary creative leadership.

–          Analytical and Strategic-thinking: Sort through and identify critical data, understand and correctly interpret it, and apply it effectively to drive business growth.

–          Teamwork: Work effectively in teams.

–          Creativity/Innovation: Approach a problem from a different angle, find a better way of doing things, and generate unique ideas.

–          Communication: Support or defend a position in a clear, concise, and persuasive manner.

–          Organizational/Time Management: Balance numerous projects and issues at one time, and properly prioritize projects.

–          Additional Skills: Interpersonal, Enthusiasm, Passion for consumers, Interest in Marketing

Although these are the basic skills needed by all marketers, the importance of each of these skills will vary depending on the industry and sector of marketing.

Anyway a professional marketing qualification or a postgraduate course help to become one of the best in the area.

That’s why today, Oficina da Marca Blog brings to you some tips on how to use one of the most popular social networks, the Instagram, as a powerful marketing tool. Yes, that’s right, Instagram!

Most of the people think that Instragram was built only to share personal photos with friends, and that’s half true, but this socialplatform has a lot of potential when we are talking about business.

What would be a business without customers, and even more important, without brand lovers?

With Instagram you can reach a community of 150 million active users, and share with them the essence and the history of your brand. More than any other social platform, Instagram works around emotions and life experiences, the perfect tool to share the passion.

Dear Marketers, do not underestimate this social platform. Bet on Instagram as you were sharing the good moments of your life. Tell histories, show how your products are made. Embrace your audience and in return they will follow you faithfully.

But now you say that this is only a theory. Ok, so let’s talk about the real business and the best practices to empowering your Instagram account:

– Promote spontaneous and genuine photographs that involve the audience.

– Run a Instagram contest. Engage your audience, get new followers and email subscribers. A small prize, but attractive, will result in huge amounts of traffic to your website and social profile. Also it will build a viral circle of shares between users.

– Use geotags, placing your brand on the map. This will help you to reach to a specific local audience.

– Place a trap! Connect Facebook and twitter with Instagram to build a net that will catch a larger audience.

– Videos, videos everywhere! They flow like photographs in the Instagram news feed, and they have a huge viral potencial on all social networks.

– Be a storyteller, show to your audience how your brand was built, go to the roots and improve your engagement with your followers. Johnnie Walker did it on their Instagram profile, and the result was incredible.

– Use filters! Yes, that’s the core functionality of Instagram and you should use it. But, if you want to preserve the original colors of your photo, always use the popular hashtag #nonfilter. This way you’re able to reach a larger audience, being this hashtag one of the most used tags on Instagram.

Still not convinced that you should use Instagram? Ok, just take a look at the facts:

Now take all the tips in consideration and remember, Instagram can be a powerful tool to your business, you just need to do it right.

Continue following us for more news about how to create, nourish and maintain successful brands.

To help remove some of the animosity from the relationship, it helps to have everyone on the same page and understand the multiplication mindset when it comes to creating the right content marketing:

1. Set objectives: Traditionally, marketing has created content and handed it off to sales teams to use how and when they see fit; a “one-size-fits-all” approach that no longer works. Before marketing can better assist sales, both have to determine their main objective for content — brand awareness, lead generation, sales, customer retention, thought leadership, and so forth.
2. Know your buyers: Take time to identify the people with whom you want to connect and understand them intimately. By creating personas, both sales and marketing will identify and understand common characteristics of a group of people with whom you want to connect. It outlines their perspectives, fears, drivers, and content needs.
3. Understand your buyer/retention cycle: Many companies focus on generating leads and closing the sale, then forget about customers until it’s time for them to buy again. That’s a big mistake. Sales teams need to think about retention and renewals as much as the original sale. What matters most to your persona during each phase? How do their content needs change?
4. The multiplier effect: This is where sales gains empowerment and marketing can catch their breath. On average, teams can create 12 additional pieces of content from a single white paper. Here are just a few examples once you have the main piece created:

• Blogs: Generate multiple posts that cover why the problem is a problem, the solution (your unique point of view) and the impact the solution has on an organization.
• Videos: Consider both internal and external. What does your subject-matter expert have to teach about the subject? What’s something that proved most valuable to a customer.
• Infographic: We all like pictures, and they help make statistics and new processes easier to relate to.
• Publish an eBook: Look for common themes and questions and then create an eBook that addresses them.
• Develop an app: Can you help your customers by making life easier for them through an app?
• Create a community: If you hear the same questions from customers over and over, this may be the time to bring them together. Connect them both online and off and help facilitate connections that prove valuable for them.

Right time. Right place. Right content

What content you use when depends on the persona and where they are in the buyer/retention cycle. Now that you understand your personas, and the breadth and depth of content that you can create from a single source, it’s easier to map that to the buyer/retention cycle and deliver the right content that engages them with the right message when they’re most likely to pay attention.

Source: Carla Johson, Content Marketing Institute

The only disadvantage of this weapon is that we cannot carry with us the products to demonstrate their real dimensions, colours, materials and finishes as a finished product. Nonetheless, we can definitely plan the best Mission possible so that we are able to transmit and provide the best Brand Experience ever in the limited time available that usually clients offer in these situations.

The main goals of these Missions are to obtain deeper knowledge of the market we are visiting, to create new and maintain existing business relationships and, in the end, to close sales. The study of the market during the visit is extremely relevant so we understand small work processes and hierarchies within our clients companies, what they think, how they work, who they delegate to, who is our key contact in the company, where they work, etc. But also how people live in that country, where they eat, where they walk their dog, how they dress, how they talk to each other, etc.

The advantages of investing in communicating our brands in this way is that we can control how the message is transmitted to stakeholders and we can read, interpret and respond to their sensorial signals and direct feedback to the impact our brands and products have caused over them. It is through this channel that we can detect indifference or passion, interest, needs and wants. However, it is also here that spokesperson responsible for promoting and selling the brands is most under test and evaluation from our clients. They are in their “natural habitat” so it is normal that in these situations they are more confortable to ask any questions about any subject that may arise during the presentation. This is why the spokesperson chosen is the main key in this marketing strategy. He or she must be previously prepared at the highest level possible, in all departments concerning the brands, from marketing to sales and graphics, know the brand story and path from the very beginning, but also where it is going in the future, and have enough confidence to be able to close a sale after a 15mins meeting.

And now you ask, but how do we plan a Mission? There are countless small yet important tasks you need to complete before actually stepping on an airplane. However it all depends where you are going, what are your main goals, who are you meeting and what are you promoting. Nonetheless, here we describe to you the most important steps to follow when planning a Mission, whatever goals and stakeholders you have in mind.

Planning a Mission, step by step:

1. Collect information: first thing to do is collect the most information possible about the market and stakeholders you are visiting so you can maximise their needs and motivations.
2. Set your goals and objectives: specify who exactly you are visiting, how are you going to approach them, how are you going to create or maintain a relationship with that stakeholder, what will your action be to potentiate the sale, and the sale.
3. Prepare content: with all the data in your hands, prepare in the best way possible what content will be presented to the stakeholder, concentrate in offering solutions that satisfy his needs.
4. Presentation: to provide the best Brand Experience ever, prepare an excellent presentation that is coherent with your brands identity, take care of your own physical appearance, use dynamic audiovisual tools, and prepare some physical material to leave with them (leaflet, catalogue, business card, etc).
5. Prepare counter-arguments: in the process of presenting your brand, there may be possible objections thrown in the air by your stakeholder, so make sure you prepare counter-arguments for them, use them as opportunities to provide him with further information.
6. Be different: surprise your stakeholder by discussing topics that matter to him, take with you a gift that you can leave with them.
7. Most importantly, conquer your stakeholder’s empathy: find and state more than once common points of interest between you and him; compliment him honestly; show him you are interested in meeting his objectives and make him fulfilled with sealing the deal.

At the end of the Mission don’t forget to do your balance of contacts obtained, the deals that remain to be closed, and the commitments for the following weeks. The secret is not in the visit itself, but in the planning preceding the trip and the maintenance of relationships after it’s completion. In the end, its success depends on the following that you make afterwards.

Sara Almeida – Marketer for Koket

Social Media
Perhaps the latest and greatest trend in raising brand awareness is implementing a smart social media campaign. By creating pages for your business on multiple websites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, you can easily reach potential customers from all over the world.
To be successful with social media, it’s usually necessary to incorporate a consistent logo and slogan so your target audience makes the connection. It’s also important to be highly interactive and network with relevant people within your industry. For example, it’s helpful to follow other businesses, “like” or “retweet” content and leave comments whenever possible. While the initial stages can be slow, you can often boost your brand awareness considerably over time.
Search Engine Optimization SEO
Although everyone and his brother seem to be talking about SEO these days, it’s nonetheless a critical part of branding. If you really want to get ahead of competitors, it’s helpful to boost your page ranking within Google and other search engines. This is because popping up on page one of search results is one of the best ways to quickly bring exposure to your business. Due to the fact that roughly 80% of people use search engines to look for products and services, it’s critical that you capitalize and get your website in front of potential customers. Not only will SEO bring attention to your business, it will often give you a sense of authority.
Utilizing Existing Customer Base
Another simple way to maximize exposure with minimal effort is to implement existing customers into your branding campaign. For example, if you already have a small amount of brand loyalists, you can reach out to them and politely ask to share your content. In order to streamline the process, it’s ideal to add buttons from popular social media and social networking sites to your content. Including calls to actions such as “like” this post on Facebook if you find it helpful can provide loyalists with a simple way to share your content.
Guest Blogging
An additional technique that appears to be catching on is writing guest blog posts on relevant blogs within your industry. It’s relatively simple and revolves around first contacting bloggers or website owners. You then ask if they would allow you to create a post on their blog. Assuming they approve, you then write at least a 400 word article and post it on their blog. This method can be extremely valuable because you can reach an established reader base who already trusts the blogger. Consequently, you can often create massive brand wareness seemingly overnight.