Small Business Labs

Harvard Business Review on Personal Branding

Creating and maintaining a personal brand is important for everyone. But it's especially important for freelancers and independent workers - their brand is crucial to securing and keeping customers.  

Harvard Business Review's A New Approach to Building Your Personal Brand provides the best overview of the steps needed to create a personal brand we've seen.

It also nicely describes why you need one. Key quote:

For better or worse, in today's world everyone is a brand. Whether you're applying for a job, asking for a promotion, or writing a dating profile, your success will depend on getting others to recognize your value. So you need to get comfortable marketing yourself.

The article covers a seven-step process for personal branding. The steps are:

1. Define your purpose by exploring your mission, passion, and strengths, and thinking about whom you want to make a difference to and how.
2. Audit your personal brand equity by cataloging your credentials, doing a self-assessment, and researching how other people view you.
3. Construct your personal narrative by identifying memorable, resonant stories that will best convey your brand.
4. Embody your brand by paying attention to the message you're sending in every social interaction.
5. Communicate your brand story through speeches, social media, the press, and other channels.
6. Socialize your brand by getting influential people to share your stories.
7. Reevaluate and adjust your brand by doing an annual audit to find deficits to fix and strengths to build on.

The article goes into greater detail on how to accomplish each of the seven steps.  

We've used a similar approach since we started our business over two decades ago. For example, we started this blog in 2007 to help communicate and socialize our brand.  

And we completely agree with the article's conclusion and believe it's particularly true for small businesses and independent workers:

The personal branding process takes work. But we know from research and experience that it will allow you to better control your professional and personal image and thus the success and impact that you can have in the world.

Accenture on Social Commerce

Accenture, a global consulting and services firm, predicts that social commerce will grow to $1.2 trillion in global revenue by 2025.

Accenture defines social commerce as:

"The integration of social experiences and ecommerce transactions in a single path to purchase, enabled by platforms."

The Accenture chart below (click to enlarge) provides more details.

Social commerce, which is also called social selling, isn't new.

The traditional direct selling industry (also known as multi-level marketing) has been around at least since the 1940s, with well-known brands such as Avon, Tupperware, and Mary Kay - all of which integrate social experiences of some form on the path to purchase.

But we agree with Accenture that social commerce is experiencing explosive growth thanks to the rise of ecommerce and social media platforms.

We've also seen in our research a surge in social commerce.

The MBO Partners State of Independence study series has found that the use of social media by independent workers (self-employed, freelancers, independent contractors, etc.) to find and sell to customers has substantially increased since 2014.

With the rise and continued growth of the creator economy - which is reliant on social commerce - we agree with Accenture that social commerce will substantially grow over the next few years.

The Dramatic Growth of Internet Ad Spending

OK, it's well known that Internet advertising has been growing rapidly.  But even knowing that, the chart below (click to enlarge) is still stunning.  

The chart is from Adage's Marketing Fact Pack 2020 and shows that the internet's share of U.S. ad spending has increased from just 6.4% in 2006 to over 50% in 2020 and is forecast to reach 60% in 2022.

Print ads in newspapers are magazines, obviously, have taken the biggest hit share wise. But TV's share has also fallen about one-third over this period.

There's a lot of other interesting data in the Marketing Fact Pack 2020.  

For example, Accenture, PWC, Deloitte, and IBM are all on the list of the world's 10 biggest marketing agencies (they're 6th through 9th).  

A key reason these firms are doing so well is digital's share of U.S. agency revenue was almost 54% in 2018, up from about 33% in 2012.  This shift opened the door for non-traditional agencies to gain share. 

See the report for more fun ad-related facts and data. 

Digital Marketing Success Remains Elusive for Most Small Businesses

Infusionsoft recently released their 3rd annual Small Business Marketing Trends report. 

The report paints a not so pretty picture of the digital marketing efforts of small businesses. The two key points from the executive summary are:

• The digital world continues to leave some small businesses in the dust. One in seven (15 percent) don’t plan to use digital marketing in 2018.
• Digital marketing success remains elusive to most small business owners. Forty-six percent are unsure their marketing strategies work, 17 percent know they aren’t working.

These findings are particularly distressing given that the report points out that "Gaining and keeping customers remain the top marketing goals" for small businesses.

The Infusionsoft chart below shows how small business owners viewed the effectiveness of their digital marketing efforts over the past 3 years. 

A century ago department store pioneer John Wanamaker famously may or may not have said "half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

But at least Wanamaker (assuming he said it) felt half his advertising budget was worth it. It's pretty clear from this data that most small businesses can't point to value being added by their digital marketing efforts.

The 2nd half of the Infusionsoft report has a series of recommendations and advice on improving the effectiveness of digital marketing. This section is well worth reading.

Mobile Ad Spending Booming

Not surprisingly given the growth of mobile computing, spending on mobile digital advertising is booming.

As the chart  below shows, eMarketer is forecasting that in 2016 digital ad spend will surpass $100 billion and account for more than 50% of all digital ad expenditure.

        

They are also forecasting that in 2015 there will be there will be more than 2 billion smartphone users and about 1 billion tablet users worldwide.

Americans Consume an Amazing Amount of Media

The audience measurement giant Nielsen released new data on the total number of media users across connected devices. Their chart below (click to enlarge) summarizes the data.

Not only are lots of Americans using connected devices, they're spending a stunning amount of time on them. Key quote from Nielsen's article:

While the average American adult spent nearly a week (149 hours 14 minutes) on average watching traditional television each month in fourth-quarter 2014, other ways to connect with content were desirable as well. In that same quarter, U.S. adults spent well over 15 hours each month watching time-shifted content, close to 30 hours using the Internet on a computer, and over 43 hours using any app/web on a smartphone! In addition, consumer’s monthly time spent listening to radio was also a resounding 58 hours and 36 minutes.

Americans also love their social media. From the article:

Consumers are also spending a lot of time on social media: 133 million are connecting via computer, 142 million are using social media on an app or smartphone, and 124 million are using social media on the web on a smartphone.

Given these numbers it's hard to see where we have time for anything beyond media consumption.  

The Booming Field of Public Relations

Interesting data from Pew Research's The Growing Pay Gap Between Journalism and Public Relations shows that the PR field is booming even while the total number of reporters in declining.

As the Pew chart below shows, over the 10 year period from 2004 to 2013 the number of reporters fell by 17%.  Over the same time period, the number of PR professionals increased by 22%.

           
Public relations is booming because PR is proving to very effective in an online world.  This is leading to more firms investing in PR and related activities.  

The industry calls PR "earned media", which the marketing firm Hubspot explains in more detail in their blog post What is Earned Media.

We expect public relations to continue to grow, but often do so under other names. Content marketing is one of these names, and expect to hear this term much more in the future.  

BI Forecast: Beacons Will Change Retail

The ability to provide real-time, location-specific, personalized data delivered straight to a customer's smartphone has long been considered the holy grail of location-based marketing. 

According to a recent report by Business Insider (registration required), a relatively new technology called Beacons is poised to deliver this capability.

The report goes on to say that Beacons are the most important retail technology since mobile mobile credit card readers.

Beacons are inexpensive pieces of hardware that send Bluetooth signals that trigger location-based applications in smartphones.  Applications include include customer service notifications, special upgrade offers or other personalized marketing messages.  

The chart below, from the report, shows BI's forecast of the number of Beacons installed in the US.

A key reason everyone is so bullish on Beacons is its use of Bluetooth, which is supported by a large and growing number of smartphones. Key report quote on the Bluetooth installed base:

Beacons are compatible with about one-third of active smartphones globally and nearly all iPhones.Globally, we estimate that 570 million Android and Apple smartphones are compatible with Bluetooth low energy (BLE), the signal emitted by beacons to wake up smartphone apps, which translates to roughly one-third of the smartphone installed base. The proportion of BLE-compatible phones would be even higher in markets like the U.S. where Apple devices are more common. All iPhones running iOS 7 (90% of iPhones) are compatible with BLE.

We agree with BI that Beacons will change retail. While mass deployment is still several years away, small retailers should start to follow this technology with the aim of understanding how it could be used in their businesses.  

The Rise of Social Commerce Platforms

Chloe+Isabel is an online social jewelry retailer and they recently raised $15 million in venture funding.

Their platform allows women to build online stores featuring their favorite Chloe + Isabel jewelry, then market them via on and offline social networks. Think Tupperware parties going digital.

They are one of many companies creating social commerce platforms targeted at women. Other examples include Stella & Dot (jewelry and accessories), Ruby Ribbon (clothing).

The business model of these firms is straight forward. It used to be called multi-level marketing, but that got a bit of bad name so the industry switched to social commerce.  

The basics of the model are a company like Chloe+Isabel recruits independent workers to sell their products. The company provides the products and marketing support.

The independent sales rep sells the products and recruits new people to sell. The rep gets a commission on their own sales plus a commission on all sales done by the people they recruit. 

The platform companies stress 2 key features in their recruiting pitches, unlimited earnings and a flexible lifestyle. 

The social commerce/multi-level marketing it's a big industry in the U.S. and includes such well known companies as Amway and Herbalife. It's not surprising it's migrating online.

Amazon's Shopping and Showrooming Phone

Amazon is a retailer, so it's not surprising their new cellphone would be built for shopping.

It's key feature is called Firefly, which uses object recognition software so that users can scan items and then buy them immediately on Amazon.

It can also recognize sounds and link back to the music, movies and TV shows they come from.  

According to Amazon, Firefly can recognize over 100 million items, including 245,000 movies and TV episodes, 160 live TV channels, 35 million songs and 70 million products.

So you can think of Amazon's new cellphone as combining showrooming on steroids with a mobile Amazon cash register.  

Other features include a 4.7-inch screen (slightly bigger than an iPhone), a 13-megapixel camera and earphones that resist tangling.

It also has a "dynamic perspective" feature than uses 4 onboard cameras to track a user's head movements so it can provide 3D like images.  Pretty cool.  

The phone is priced at $199 to $299 with a two-year contract. This is cheaper than similar iPhones, but not as aggressively priced as many expected.

Analysts are split on how successful Amazon's foray into cellphones will be. It's a very competitive market with Apple and Samsung well entrenched. It's also unclear how many people want a cellphone optimized for shopping.

But underestimating Amazon has proven (or proved, for those who take grammer more seriously than I do) in the past to be a bad idea.