Question time. Where is transformation? What is the virtual intersection of heart and head for your business?

Tip: It’s here where you find passion, innovation, service and satisfaction. It’s often the “secret sauce” of your business.

If your enterprise did not exist, what would the rest of us be missing?  And, thank goodness your business does exist, because now we can sample and realize that something special does happens at your company. Your secret sauce brings out the best of your team members and those you serve.

How do you describe it? How do you define it? How do you view what is most valuable to your organization and the marketplace? You must frame it on your terms. Focus it forward (like this image). This simple hand exercise brings you into the future of your enterprise. Keeping it simple, here are 10 ways to see, reflect and value your future. Answer these questions and see the clarity they bring.

1. What are the values that really mean something in your business?
2. What culture do those values live in? How do others describe it?
3. What’s cookin’ in your culture? You can sense it, smell it and taste it.
4.  How do you bring forth new ideas and innovation?
5. What constitutes a win? And, how do you celebrate them?
6. How do you handle losses? Is the pick-yourself-up a learning exercise?
7. What unique mixture of old and new seems to be at work?
8. How do you track what’s happening? Measure the keys.
9. How can you keep it going? Know how to feed the excitement?
10. Why is it so special? To you and to them?

At SA – Strategic America – we ask ourselves these types of questions as we continue to adapt—directly and intuitively – to the needs and forces of a very dynamic marketplace. We know that companies across the board are doing this, as well. Watch what is happening with JCPenney. It’s in a re-positioning that will vitally change this company. My guess is, for the better.

SA’s mission of “finding a better way, always” is similar to others (such as Hulu) who learn to embrace innovation and continuously live there.  A recent 4A’s conference featured speakers from various companies and firms across the spectrum – agencies, media, technology firms like Google and others – all of whom in one way or another shared their views of a transformative time. I have a suggestion, an offer. If you’re looking to answer some of these questions above, let’s get together and talk. We’d like to find out more about you, your future and the way you personally define success.

I could write about each of the above, but the real value comes in passing it along to you and letting the thought process begin. We know that when the ‘magic’ of business takes over, marvelous things can happen.

 My Recommended Reads:

http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2012/full-list

http://mikeomalleyblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/twelve-tips-from-worlds-most-innovative.html

During the past two years at SA, we have taken our entire 85-member staff through Franklin Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.

Here are five things we’ve learned in applying the 7 Habits principles into our culture:

1. Management must prove its commitment to the staff.  This program involved an initial three days of training with staff members throughout the agency.  Beyond the time and financial commitment, it involved vulnerability and understanding as we discussed detailed items, ranging from unproductive frustrations and ways to improve effectiveness not only at work, but also at home.  Our senior management team was engaged every step of the way and provided a safe environment in which employees could  share openly.  This was just the beginning.

2. You must answer, “What’s in it for them?”  For most employees, the first thing that comes to mind in undergoing this training, “What management is really saying is, ‘We want more bricks, but you have to get your own straw!”  The great thing about the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is that most found it easier to begin applying the habits at home before applying them at work.  That’s okay because we found that if people become more effective in their personal lives, they are more likely to be effective at work.

We also covered work/life balance and the importance of self renewal (Habit 7 – Sharpen the Saw).   While we often experience commitment from our staff that is over and above what is expected, we also know that without renewal, we all burn out.

3. Empower your employees to own it.  A common denominator of great companies is their empowerment of staff to drive initiatives through their organization.  After our first group went through the initial training, five staff members from SA became Franklin Covey Certified coaches and trainers. These coaches and trainers have since taken the entire staff through the 7 Habits training, which has been both rewarding for them as well as a sign of SA’s commitment to infuse the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” into our culture.

Additionally, SA has engaged numerous individuals throughout the organization to keep the program thriving.  Which leads to one of the most important points in making sure your program continues.

4. You must have a plan for long-term ongoing implementation.  This is where the rubber meets the road.  We use it or it fades away.  The plan has to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely).  Lay-ups and free-throws i.e., find a way to implement the fundamentals on an ongoing basis and they will become part of your culture.  We have done this in several ways.

• Habit of the Month.  We are taking one of the 7 Habits and making it our company focus for an entire month, announcing it at our monthly all-staff update meeting.  We enlist Habit of the Month Champions from each department and let them creatively devise implementation of that habit within their department.  We have a structured way to report back on implementation.  And wow – the staff has already taken it beyond where we ever imagined it could go!
•  7 Habits Maximizer.  This is a full day refresher course to gauge where we are personally in our application of the 7 Habits.  It also introduces us to additional ways we can increase our effectiveness and impact in decision making.  To date, we have three remaining groups to finalize the Maximizer class.  This also reinforces management’s commitment to the program.

5.  The best ideas can come from anyone in your organization.  This is one of the most important things I’ve learned.  Habit 6, Synergize, helps us understand not only the importance of synergy, which we all intuitively know, but the importance of the process of getting to synergy.

To quote Michael Nolan, “There is somebody smarter than any of us, and that is all of us.”  When we realize this, we truly begin to honor and respect the viewpoints of other individuals.  We allow ourselves to celebrate our differences.Those differences take us to places of innovation to which we could not have traveled on our own.

The results – the ongoing implementation of the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” in our staff is making a positive impact in service to our clients and in our employees’ lives.  We see and hear it throughout our organization.   And our hope is that it will continue to infiltrate our culture and that our staff and clients alike will benefit.

Nathan’s recommended reads:

Initiating Change—The Leader’s Biggest Challenge

Making Change Happen, and Making It Stick

The concept embraces innovation while challenging organizational status quo. It allows a company to find the sweet spot between focus and operation – the areas where we can ensure market leadership as well as product and service differentiation.

Nearly every business today is lean, centered, right-sized and metrics-driven. The past four years have essentially required it. That has meant there is little room for working at the margins — the white space of a business plan — to identify and build out new and better business models.  With the U.S. consumer confidence on the upswing for the first time since 2008, the timing is good to reassess strategy and decisions.

Strategic convergence focuses on those areas and addresses the need to build alliances, partnerships, and off-core relationships in order to pursue what may be opportunities for true strategic transformation for a business.

It’s what Franklin Covey refers to as the Maturity Continuum®, a progression from dependence to independence to interdependence. At SA, our entire staff has undergone Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People/Organizations”. We’ve learned that when we think win/win, we develop a mindset for strategic convergence, i.e. seeing opportunities that may not be possible without the help and active engagement of others.

Interdependence builds synergy and connects in ways that form new organizational ecosystems. New public victories. And, with that comes opportunity. Innovation is made possible by collaborating with others. And new and better systems, processes and outcomes.

At SA, we’ve found that some of the best, new ideas come from our developing strong relationships with our supplier partners. We both win. And so do our clients.

Strategic convergence means being able to operate with more flexibility, more communications, more interdependence, and more innovation … for more opportunity than each could create on our own.

Interested? Let’s talk.

My Recommended Reads:

Franklin Covey Blog/Franklin Covey News

Innovation 101

Avoiding Innovation’s Terrible Toll

Top Leadership Gurus

The Super Bowl by the Numbers

According to a Retail Advertising and Marketing Association survey, 173 million people will watch the New England Patriots and New York Giants in the Super Bowl on Sunday, Feb. 5, up from an estimated 171 million last year and the most in the survey’s eight-year history.

Consumer spending for the Super Bowl will reach an all-time high, too, with the average game-watcher expected to shell out $63.87 on related merchandise, apparel and snacks, up from $59.33 last year. Total Super Bowl spending is expected to reach $11 billion.

Established brands will protect their position. Up and coming brands will invite consideration. Older brands will look for their renewal.  Cars, snacks, beer, electronics, movies and more will vie for the title of most entertaining spots of this year’s crop. We’ll see viewer-generated content. Celebrities. Stories well told.

We’ll be invited to check the second screen (our computer), iPad or Smartphone for live streaming coverage, back stories and additional brand engagement. In fact, iProspect tells us that 61% of Facebook users, identified as Super Bowl fans, posted status updates during the 2011 game and that 28% of users, identified as fans, directly chatted or messaged with friends.

So why don’t more advertisers pay to play in this exciting space?

Fear of failure. Cost. And return on investment. Being judged by the high standards of expectation can be daunting for even the boldest of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs). GM CMO Joel Ewanick says, “This isn’t for the faint of heart.”

Being tagged as not ready for this prime time venue can be career threatening. Not to mention the cost of $3.5 million to $4 million per spot. CFOs like to know how that plays out in terms of customer acquisition, retention and market share. ROI is the real reason. One shot at results. Say you get a one-sided game. A national or international story intrudes on the fun. Or you’re buried behind or among other great and not-so-great spots. It’s a gamble, for sure.

 Nonetheless, it’s an event at the top of pop culture and an interesting look at just what pop culture values. Done well, the risks can be rewarding.

 My Recommended Reads:

The ROI of Super Bowl Ads

The 2012 Super Bowl by the Numbers

Five Secrets of a Winning Super Bowl Ad

No One Advertises More during the Super Bowl than Autos

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are not alone. We all struggle from time to time with preparedness and effectiveness, so I have developed a few pointers that will likely help with planning and executing a successful meeting. Most of these concepts are not revolutionary, but are important principles that may have recently fallen by the wayside with busy schedules and deadlines.

I have adopted the following quote in both my personal and professional life as a way to remind myself just how essential planning is –

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

While this may seem like a simple concept, it is critically important to the overall effectiveness of meetings. Here are a few ways to plan ahead for meetings:

1. What is the agenda? Before scheduling the meeting, create an agenda. Know what topics need to be covered and what types of outcomes you expect. In this agenda, clearly identify who is responsible for what line items to ensure accountability. Assuming you are using some sort of calendaring system (Outlook/Exchange, Google Apps, etc), make sure this agenda is inserted as the body of the meeting request. This way attendees may print the agenda or they can view it from their smart phone or iPad, keeping in mind how excessive use of handheld devices may be perceived.
2. Who should be present? Based on the agenda, you should have a good feel for who needs to be present.  If there are people who only have a small role or contribution, plan your agenda to have them positioned early and allow them to leave when their part is done.  This won’t apply to all meetings, but try to be mindful of it.
3. What is the job number? If your company bills time incrementally, make sure to include the job number within the meeting request. Don’t make people waste time digging for it.

If you receive a meeting request that is missing one or several of these components, tentatively accept the meeting and reply with a request that these items be included prior to accepting. Hold your teammates accountable!

Now that you’ve properly planned the meeting, make sure to conduct the meeting based on the agenda. How are we going to accomplish this? Keep reading!

1. Expect punctuality from ALL participants. Don’t sit around waiting for one or two missing people.  If you notice required attendees are not present, call them.  If they don’t answer, send a runner.  Don’t wait 5 or 10 minutes to do this.  Wasted billable time accumulates quickly if you have people sitting idle in a room waiting for others to join.
2. Take digital notes. Why switch to digital notes? Well, as soon as the meeting is over, you’ll find that some take good notes. Some take bad notes. Some take no notes at all. Taking digital notes ensures that all participants will have access to the topics and take-aways. All parties should know what is expected from them as a result of the meeting. These notes can become a rolling repository for all meetings related to a certain project. Save them in a project folder on a server and make sure to send all participants a link to where the notes are stored.
3. Schedule your next meeting.  Use the digital notes you took as the foundation for the agenda for your next meeting.

Clearly, none of these principles are necessarily revolutionary. However, I can assure you that utilizing these strategies will help you and your team plan and execute effective meetings and in turn, reduce wasted time and frustration.

What are some strategies your company uses to facilitate effective meetings?

My Recommended Reads:

How to Encourage Employee Participation in Meetings

Running Effective Meetings

1. Change the copyright year on all publications especially those that are digital. Not only is this important legally, but it tells prospects and customers that your presence is current and your company is on top of things for the good of the company as well as the clients you serve. Competence in small but important steps such as this builds trust and credibility.
2. Walk through the office with the eyes of a client or customer. What do you see? Magazines that are months, even years old, coffee rings on conference tables, cartoons in poor taste on bulletin boards?  All of these reflect on your brand and how you are rolling out the welcome mat to those who walk through your door.
3. Take a few minutes to see who is new.  Who has been hired this year? Are they familiar with what you do and how you do it? No one can discount the impression made by the first person at your company to whom a prospect speaks. Do all your “firsts” represent your brand, your culture and your way of doing business? Double check this with some longer-term employees  as well. If you can, secret shop your own company so you know exactly what customers experience.
4. It’s wonderful when employees are proud to wear your logo on their clothing. It’s equally important that those employees remember they represent the company when doing so or driving the company vehicle on local streets.  So, remind employees that their behavior should match the company’s brand whether on the clock or not. Cutting off the president of your largest client in traffic can come back to haunt them . . . and you.
5. Recommit to walking the talk. All companies have branding lulls or even branding setbacks.  Don’t use that as an excuse to fail but as a reason to innovate. Make sure everyone on your team feels that way as well. Look for innovation from everyone – from the boardroom to  the mailroom.

Beyond these five vital steps, ask employees to suggest other brand checkups.  As an example, I once found a two-year-old (outdated) bill stuffer still being mailed out by an accounting department in another company, perhaps one of the last places anyone might think to look.  

My Recommended Reads:

Copyright Basics

What is Your Brand Saying

Retail is the space where the power of consumer purchasing is engaged and where the competitive dynamics of the marketplace are full-blown. Marketers and their brands live and die here.  Hundreds or thousands of retailers, whether independent and corporate-owned, compete among marketing’s four Ps—price, product, promotion and place in a complex environment, with infinite variables.

It’s where the brand experience thrives, sales are made and jobs are created (nearly 500,000 for seasonal sales alone). It’s where best practices emerge and collectively, where customers prove who and what is worthy of their purchases.

Understanding this space and developing simple, scalable solutions is critical.

For a manufacturer distributing through independent retailers, the challenge is to determine how to engage them in your program – a promotion, new product, and market launch or co-op marketing opportunity – in an efficient, effective, measurable way.  

What many manufacturers and retailers are missing is the collaborative link – the interface of strategy, technology and service that makes the complex, simple. Over the past 31 years, Strategic America has grown, due to its field marketing expertise, particularly in developing software and database systems, networks and processes that accommodate retail’s numerous variables, allowing companies to focus on their underlying business models and growth goals.

 At Strategic America, we empower retailers through intuitive marketing technology scaled to support extensive marketing endeavors and (whose?)teams dedicated to service.

We call this empowerment space, aka our suite of digital services – Mētis – named for the mythical icon of strategy. Mētis brings technology solutions designed to stimulate results. Among our key Mētis services are:

• Automated on-demand media planning/placement with a variety of local media choices
• Prepackaged media programs with individually tailored local options for retailers to select
• Design-on-demand ads for preapproved brand unity and compliance
• ROI campaign measurement for reporting
• Direct marketing strategies including customer satisfaction, proximity, traditional and online
• Account management system for easy compilation of data and reporting

Any of these Mētis options may be selected to serve a company’s marketing needs. Strategic America’s team of talented professionals serves and supports these digital solutions.

The result – an integratedparadigm to view field and channel marketing strategies; a better way to engage and support your retail partners; with a marketing partner that brings it together for you – Strategic America. Call 888.898.6400 or visit www.strategicamerica.com.  

 My Recommended Reads:

Cross Channel Retail Remains a Work In Progress

12 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2012

Franchise Update: Local-Level Marketing

Whether you communicate to your audience via a blog, Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, the only true way to build relationships with a growing network is to listen, engage and provide content your audience finds valuable.

CONTENT. How do you begin? Do you write for SEO value? Do you post frequently? Do you create an editorial calendar? Do you review all corporate communications and repurpose its content? You get the point. You should answer YES to all of the above.

Jay Baer, Social Media Consultant and author of The Now Revolution, developed a series of free social media worksheets that you can use to help keep elements of your social media program on track.

Susan Cato, Senior Director of Web and New Media Strategies at CompTIA, said, “You can’t have a social media strategy without a content strategy.”

There are three elements to developing effective content strategy:

• Know what your customers, audience or community members want to talk about. Be willing to engage in those conversations.
• Know where your audience wants to have these conversations; in other words, where they hang out online.
• Measure the results of your conversations to see which ones catch fire.

While development of these steps is critical, those alone are a one-way strategy. Building relationships requires a strategy that taps into a base you already trust and knows you well. An effective content strategy is made up of numerous individual strategies that all feed into the same corporate goals. Enable your employees to engage with your targeted fan base, influencers and thought leadership channels and, with the right training, you’ve empowered an army of content enablers, not just creators.

My Recommended Reads:

Five Key Tips for a Successful Social Media Content Strategy

What Makes an Awesome Content Strategy?

Six Layers of Social Media Content Strategy

Local franchisees of Wendy’s Restaurants, sales agents such as Nationwide, dealers throughout Lennox Industries and retailers, including GE Appliances, implement proven SA web-based advertising techniques within their specific market areas through:

Search Engine Marketing  and Pay-Per-Click

 Roughly 88% of Internet users consult search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing for information about a product or service. Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns catch people at a critical point in their purchase process. PPC is the prevailing method for catching target consumers in your area at the point of purchase. According to Pew research, they’re already looking for your product —you just have to “pull” them in.

Website Display Advertising—Banner Ads within Local Markets

 Although banner ad click-through rates are still low at 1 in 1,000, advertisers are appropriately focusing on impressions. Banner advertising, as a supplement to traditional campaigns, builds brand awareness. As Todd Wasserman put it in his article on Mashable.com, “The TV ad you see builds on the foundation laid by a banner ad plus a billboard and a mention on Facebook.”

Social Media (i.e., Facebook Advertising and LinkedIn Advertising)

• More than 80% of companies across the globe communicate with consumers via social media. (Worldcom PR Group)
• Facebook has more than 750 million active users, and 50% of them log on daily. The average user visits the site 40 times a month, spending 23 minutes on the site during each visit—that’s 15 hours a month. These highly engaged users are targeted based on self-provided information—age, sex, location, likes/interests and many other factors. Ads are displayed to those users who fit the criteria for a company’s specific target market. (Facebook Advertising FAQs)

• If you are looking to target affluent and influential professionals, plan on utilizing one of LinkedIn’s advertising options. Of the 44 million U.S. users, the average household income is just over $90,000; the average age is 45; more than 50% are active online every day; and 15 million are business decision makers. LinkedIn provides advertisers access to a highly sought-after and frequently elusive demographic. (LinkedIn Marketing Solutions)

Strategic America is dedicated to generating “Results at Retail Across America”. . . and web-based marketing and social media advertising now play an increasingly important role in generating those results at the local retail level.

Intrigued and have more questions?

Contact Jim Stafford, VP of Account Services, to get the answers.

jstafford@strategicamerica.com

515-453-2047

 My Recommended Reads:

Marketers Use Online Tactics More but Are Skeptical

Real-Time Relevance

Wiser About The Web
As companies get savvier about where to place their ads, there’s a flight to quality

B2B and enterprise companies aren’t trying to attract millions of consumers as customers but instead need to persuade companies (smaller audience group but with much larger budgets than individual consumers) to purchase their products and services. So, social media’s power to spread a message across the web isn’t as relevant.

Still, social media has its place in the B2B marketplace.  In fact, many B2B companies in a variety of industries find social media a powerful tool to establish thought leadership, to generate leads and perform market research.

Strategic America, as a partner in The WORLDCOM Public Relations Group, the leading global partnership of independently owned public relations and marketing firms, contributes to and has access to the latest research regarding B2B use of social media.

In a Worldcom poll of nearly 125 B2B company leaders in North America and Western Europe, the conclusion is that social media is now a key element to their brand presence and marketing endeavors.

Among the B2B leaders, their present usage and future spending shows that:

• 83% of the surveyed firms use social media to communicate with target audiences
• Close to 9 out of 10 agency execs believe social media will increase in value over the next year
• More than half of the firms will boost social media spending next year

 Usage breakdown:

• 85% of firms surveyed use Twitter
•  74% — Facebook
• 72%–  LinkedIn
• 69% -- YouTube
• 60% — Blogs

Goals and reasons to use social media:

• Thought leadership – 30% in North America
• Engage new and existing clients – 31% and 25% respectively in Western Europe
• 31% of agencies in the US, Canada and Mexico favor Twitter
• 31% of agencies in Western Europe favor Facebook

Geographic location:

• 9 out of 10 US firms use Twitter compared to 6 out of 10 European agencies .

 Business use:

• 80%  use social media tools to interact with potential clients
• 76% work online to engage existing clients
• 60% log on to social networks to build extensions of their own company websites
• 58% use social media to communicate with journalists
• 50% use platforms for employee recruitment and alumni communications

 Company size a factor?

• 80% of small companies (revenue ≤ $50 million) and 88% of large companies ($1 billion+) have used social media for more than one year
• 57% of mid-sized firms have been using social media for more than one year

Do these numbers look similar to those at your company? Do you plan to increase social media spending over the next year?

Our Recommended Reads:

Worldcom Blog Post
Most Marketers Plan to Increase Social Media Spend This Year (Mashable)

Emily Drake, SA Public Relations Coordinator, contributed to this blog post.