You have a message, but does it stick?

The problem with a lot of marketing and brand development efforts is that it is almost instantly forgettable. One of the 7 Deadly Marketing Sins I wrote about in an earlier blog entry was "Me" marketing. Talking too much about yourself is a sure fire way to be forgotten as soon as they (quickly) click away from your website.

Kim T. Gordon wrote a great piece for Entrepreneur magazine about how to make your marketing messages stick. My favorite is "Evoke an emotion." It's human nature to talk about emotional experiences. You see a great movie or go to a great restaurant and you share the experience because of what the experience made you feel. What emotions are you creating with your customers? The customer experience is an often-overlooked area of your marketing strategy. I know you have a customer service department, but have you taken the time to actually engineer the full customer experience, from prospect to post-mortem? Disney is a master of this, from regulating the temperature of the air that hits you when you leave a ride, to the smell of chocolate chip cookies they pump out on Main Street. Become intentional about your entire customer experience and engineer it to evoke an excitement about your business that they can't help but share. This should be a key elment of your brand development strategy.

Read Kim's full article here.