I was recently asked to be the Marketing Expert on TLC's Pawn Queens show Pawn Queens. As a start-up, they wanted to know my recommendations on how they could increase brand awareness, grow market share, and build stronger relationships with their customers. To discuss their marketing needs, I identified five areas of focus. These areas are critical to most start-up so I thought you might be interested as well. They are:- Think Community - Today, you need to talk to communities of individuals who use social and web technologies to link together. To quickly reach a target market, you need to reach them in the communities where they "reside". Social community based marketing is the quickest way to grow your market share and your bottom line profits.
- Think Relationships - Pawn Queens has visitors - web and in person - who come into their show and leave anonymously. Invite them to join your email program - even if it is just to learn about specials and special events. You "paid" to get them to your company so why "pay" to get to them again. Build relationships starting with the first visit.
- Think Brand Essence - Who are you? What do you stand for? Pawn Queens wants to be known as a part of the Naperville community. They should build marketing programs to reinforce that brand essence and communicate it continually to solidify their brand position in the marketplace.
- Think Networking - The new math of social marketing is 1 exceptional program + 1 individual = 100 visitors to your company. Companies - especially start ups - need to use social programs like we develop to quickly grow their prospect and customer bases. We advocate Social IMC which creates social marketing programs with a focus on bottom line results.
- Think Global - While Pawn Queens is targeting the Naperville markets, their brand essence and their products have the potential for global reach. They should think local but market global.
Discussing these points resulted in the development of a social marketing plan for Pawn Queens. I will discuss the plan in more detail in future articles.
PS - The program is tonight http://bit.ly/mTrnK2
