Author: Pascha Apter

How to Rekindle Your Business Passion

Posted on February 14, 2014 by - Business Tips, Productivity

Maybe you’re tired. Overworked. Overwhelmed. If your inbox pings one more time, so help you, you will sell your business (or quit your job), empty your savings account and hop the next flight to Zanzibar. 

Houston, you have a problem.

Because authentic marketing requires passion. You must believe that the world needs what you’re promoting — otherwise your words will ring hollow and nobody will hear you.

But what if your roaring bonfire of passion for your business has fizzled to a heap of charcoal?

First of all, make sure you’re getting enough sleep, staying hydrated and eating a vegetable once in a while. It’s hard to be passionate when you are physically drained.

Next, follow our ten-step process to relight your fire and rekindle your business passion.

Lovely curly little girl holding large paper heart, over pink background

Ten Steps to Rekindle Your Business Passion

1. Envision success

Close your eyes and take deep breaths. Relax your shoulders. Unclench your jaw. Create a moment of peacefulness.

Now, let’s have some fun. Center your mind on your business, whether it’s a struggling family venture, a nonprofit you work for, or just the spark of an idea. What does business success look like for you? Lines of customers out the door? A record year-end donation campaign? A downtown storefront?

Imagine that ideal scene. Flesh it out. Make it real.

Dream up a scene you can watch like a movie. Imagine surveying your new storefront with pride or reporting your campaign results to a surprised and grateful board of directors. What does success look like? How does it feel?

Make your ideal scene a sort of “happy place” you can return to and get strength from when the going gets tough. Set a reminder to spend five minutes every morning reliving this scene.

2. Find your why

Articulate your deeper reason for wanting your business to succeed. Maybe you want to make the most elegantly designed widgets in the world. Maybe you want to leave your mark on your town. Maybe you want to help people who have the problem your product solves.

It’s not about money. Even if your off-the-cuff answer is “Because I want to get rich,” ask why. What will that wealth give you? Freedom from the need to work? A feeling of security?

Come up with a mission statement that embodies your soul-deep reasons for doing what you do. Write it somewhere you’ll see it every day.

Or, better yet, make it a manifesto and put it on your website. Let your customers see your passion and share your mission.

3. Chart your course

A sense of progress is critical to human happiness. Once you have your big-picture view of business success, identify milestones for the near future so you can feel successful as often as you can.

4. Involve someone

It takes a village to make a business successful. Don’t try to go it alone. Even if you are a solopreneur with a budget so small it makes your accountant cry, you can still enlist help—at least in the form of emotional support—from friends, family and colleagues.

Stuck on a thorny problem? Reach out to someone who has been there and might be tickled to share his or her insights. Ask a kid for advice. You never know where a solution will come from.

Launching a business but everybody you know works a 9-5? Join (or start) a local coffee chat for entrepreneurs.

5. Empty your brain

Even if everything else is fine, you may still suffer from a paucity of passion if you are carrying around your entire to-do list in your head.

(“File articles of incorporation, ask Janice about merits of Aweber versus Mailchimp, reschedule dentist appointment, fix leaky faucet in the downstairs bathroom, write project narrative for grant application, ask Ahmed for a reference letter, pick up milk and spinach…“)

Remembering takes cognitive work. Spend a few minutes with a notepad and do a brain dump. Write down everything on your plate and on your mind.

Once you know you aren’t going to forget to send a birthday card to Aunt Carol because you wrote it down, you’ll be able to dedicate full attention to your business.

6. Outsource scut work

No matter how psyched you are about your business, there is something about it that you hate doing. Filling out tax forms, perhaps. Or calling that one lucrative, but perpetually cranky client. When this task is on your to-do list, it casts a pall over the entire day.

Identify the dreaded task and figure out a way to make it less awful. Can you pay somebody else to do it? Can you call Mr. Cranky Pants from the parking lot outside the pub where your friends are about to meet you for happy hour?

7. Go away

Sometimes you just need a break. Schedule a getaway every three to six months to recharge your batteries.

No extra money? Spend the weekend camping at a state park. Go visit your old college roommate who lives two hours away.

8. Learn something

Reconnect with your passion for your field by learning something new about it. Or shore up your skills in an area where you feel weak.

Take a class, hire a coach, find a mentor, subscribe to industry blogs and publications, join a LinkedIn group, read a book, attend a seminar. Stretch your mind.

9. Pass it on

You don’t have to be a bona fide media-recognized expert to have valuable knowledge. Find a way to share what you know with someone who needs it.

Mentor a high school kid or an emerging entrepreneur. Volunteer for an organization that would be grateful for your expertise. Giving feels good.

10. Applaud yourself

When’s the last time you patted yourself on the back for all that you’ve accomplished thus far in your business journey and in your life as a whole? Bet it’s been a while.

Treat yourself to an afternoon or at least a few hours in a place conducive to reflection, such as a conservatory or a café in a museum. Bring a journal. Make a list of achievements big and small of which you can be proud.

Let yourself feel good about where you are on your journey—and about what amazing things lie ahead.

Key Steps For a Successful Marketing Campaign

Posted on January 21, 2014 by - Strategic Marketing

A quick online inquiry about elements of a successful marketing and communication campaign will net thousands of results. Insights, suggestions and answers abound at every swipe of your finger.

Here’s a Giant snapshot of what it really takes to launch a successful marketing or communication plan in today’s marketplace and examples of campaigns that have inspired and impressed our Giants.

young businessman and business plan

How to Launch a Successful Marketing Campaign

Define Success

The first and most important aspect of ensuring a successful marketing and communication plan is to define what success looks like and set the ambition for your organization. To put together a road map to anywhere, you must first decide on your destination.

Think specific and measurable goals and objectives for the campaign – how much money would you like to fundraise? How many new customers would you like to secure? What revenue would you like to generate for the various segments of your business?

Define Your Audience

Knowing with whom you need to communicate is critical. Are you speaking to business leaders, students, or the public in mass?

Identify who your potential customers are, what their persona is and where you will find them. Most importantly, identify their motivations and concerns and understand how they make decisions.

Develop the Narrative

Craft a message that resonates with your audience. You just identified their motivations and concerns – speak directly to those.

What problem does your product help solve? How does your service provide a successful solution for your customer? How can you mitigate their concerns?

Provide your audience with as much information (narrative) as possible to ensure they are able to make an informed decision about your product and/or service.

Giant Voices’ partner, HubSpot, identified examples of successful marketing campaigns throughout recent history. Take a look. We welcome your feedback and discussion.

Get Tactical

Put your campaign into action. At this point, the rubber hits the road.

Develop project teams, establish a budget and define communication channels. Get face time with your target audience – host an event or promote your organization at a trade show.

Put yourself in front of your prospects to every extent possible within your determined budget.

Measure

It’s time to look in the mirror. Did you meet your objective? Did your campaign produce the outcomes you defined for fundraising, new customers, or revenue growth?

Assess your progress early on so you can adapt your message if necessary. The concept of “fast fail” holds true here.

If your message did not resonate or produce conditions of success be sure that you analyze whether you defined the right audience, message, and/or executed on the right communication tactics.

If at first you don’t succeed, try again.

Five Tips For Creating a GIANT Brand

Posted on December 9, 2013 by - Branding

When you think of Giant brands, we bet brands like Apple, McDonald’s, Coke or Ford come to mind. While those companies indeed have created Giant brands, we don’t think you need to have a Giant company in order to have Giant brand.

How does an organization create a Giant brand? By following our five top tips.

Five Tips For Creating a Giant Brand

1. Define what differentiates you.

This is easier said than done. Your brand should represent you and you alone. Dig deep and create a position in the marketplace that sets your organization apart from your competition.

Take Giant Voices, for example. We are an AMBITION-based marketing firm. We choose to work with clients who have something significant to achieve, and know they need expert help to succeed.

When companies want a new brochure, they call our competition. When they want to close a substantial revenue gap, they call us. There are eight common differentiation strategies to consider, stay tuned for an upcoming blog on differentiation.

2. Know what your target audience cares about.

This should not be news, but not everyone in the world should be considered part of your target market. To create a Giant brand, you will need to clearly define a target audience, and most importantly understand what specifically they care about regarding your product or service offering.

How will what you are selling affect their concerns? Define that and you are on your way to creating a Giant group of brand advocates.

To learn more about defining your target audience, check out our blog post The Ten Commandments of Naming Your New Business, Brand or Blog.

3. Brand from the inside out.

Too often leaders think about their brand externally before thinking about it internally. One of the most important things you can do to create a Giant brand is promote everyone inside your organization to brand manager.

Your internal team, meaning everyone from the cleaning crew to the C-level, should understand your brand characteristics and promises BEFORE you begin marketing your brand to the external marketplace.

4. Give your brand a personality.

When working with Giant clients to strengthen their brand, we first begin by determining a unique voice for their organization. Typically this consists of generating approximately five brand characteristics that describe the personality of the company.

If your brand were a person, what kind of a self would this person be? Would they be clever? Sophisticated? Youthful? Energetic? Conservative?

If you took your brand out for coffee, what kind of conversations would you have? Would you enjoy the experience or would rather have coffee with your competitor?

5. Plan accordingly.

You want a Giant brand? Then invest in the planning, creation and management of it today and well into the future. A comprehensive marketing plan should tie all of your marketing strategies and advertising tactics around your brand with a beautiful bow.

After all, is a tweet really any different than a sales presentation? The answer is no. Every story relating to your brand whether spoken, printed or hashtagged should reflect your brand image and unique position in the marketplace.

Want to learn how to create and manage an effective brand? Get in touch with our team. We’re here to help.