Don’t Be Haunted by Brands of the Past

Happy Halloween! Whether you’re never too old to trick or treat or would rather fast forward through this holiday to the one where you can eat turkey and fall asleep in front of the TV with no shame, today is a great time to remember that it’s not just creaky old houses in remote wood settings that are haunted. Your business can be plagued by ghosts of bad marketing’s past. You must learn to survive the horrors of brand confusion and mysterious vanishing customers.

While we don’t have the answer on how to get Google to make all the boogie-brands go away, we can recommend the following 11 not so “Stranger Things” to make sure your current brand smashes those phantoms back to the upside down where they belong:

1. Kill it with SEO: make sure search engines are optimized to find your company. Update your keywords, optimize your primary keywords, and make sure you keep them that way by using them in the content you create.

2. Stand out: make your brand’s images memorable ones, the Patronus to the Death Eaters of your competitors’ or brand’s past. It should outshine all else and leave the strongest, most valuable impression.

3. Communicate on the right platforms: If you aren’t reaching customers where they are, it doesn’t matter how important your messaging is; it’s going to be nothing more than an indistinguishable whisper chalked up to the wind.

4. Good content should stick together: How can kids defeat a killer clown? No spoilers, but they have to stay together. Good content can beat the baddest marketing monsters out there, but you have to make sure your messaging is consistent and works together with your brand.

5. Don’t post erratically: Whether it’s once a month, once a week, or once a year, stay consistent with when you show up online. If you get erratic and hope people will hang out while you “brb”, you’re going to come back to an eerily empty space.

6. Take a page from Michael Myers' stalking book: That guy’s walk somehow always beat everyone’s run. He was everywhere. Employ some remarketing strategies and your product will follow your customer around so you stay top of mind.

7. Don’t create a cliffhanger: If you say you’ll do something for a customer, do it. Don’t let them hang out there standing alone by the car at night while you get help. Always be in touch when you say you’re going to.

8. Know where everyone is: If you’ve lost track of where your customers go once they’re on your site, you can’t get them to find you again. Follow your analytics, measure activities, and know where they’re spending time so you can call them back when you need to.

9. Don’t open that door: Stick to what you know you do well; avoid uncharted territory, and for the love of everything, don’t open that door if you don’t know what’s behind it.

10. Treat, don’t trick: E-mail marketing can be the best way to deliver value directly to your people, or it can be a click-bait, spam nightmare on Elm Street. Make your e-mails meaningful and be a treat in someone’s inbox. Otherwise, the trick is on you when you get hard-bounced right out of their lives.

11. Do it selflessly: The selfish ones die; the ones who are doing it for the people they care about, survive to the final reel. Cater your products, services, website, brands, and everything about your business around serving your customers, not taking from them.