February 27, 2023 Hi there! We’re back with another round of “The Button Game”! Did you play last week? In case you didn’t play, or missed it entirely, here’s what it’s all about. The Button Right above is our button. Playing this game only takes two steps… 1. Reply to this email with your guess of how many clicks The Button will get. 2. Click the button above (or don’t!) If you guess exactly how many clicks The Button gets, you win! We played this game last week and no one won which means our pool is now $150! And if more than one person guesses it exactly right, everyone who guessed it correctly wins $150! But if no one guesses it right, then the prize pool goes up next week. It will keep going up until someone guesses it exactly. Here are some rules about this game: 1. You don’t need to click to win. (That can make the guessing tricky, don’t you think?) 2. You DO have to send me your guess. 3. I have to receive it by Friday, February 24 at 5pm EST (you have five days to guess). I will track how many people click The Button this week. Here are some stats to help you guess: There are 4,306 people that are getting this email, and about 1,014 people open it every week. Reply back with your guess to play and then keep reading to learn about how you can use influencer marketing to grow your business!  I’m going nostalgic here but did you like watching the Muppets? I will never forget the hours I spent watching the movies and cartoons with all my favorite characters. I mean… who didn’t love Muppet Babies?  Of them all, one of the more unique of the Muppet Movies was “The Muppets Take Manhattan.” In this movie, we see the group (as recent college grads) head to New York with a new musical they wrote and wish to star in. They learn quickly that without a big name to back them up, they will get denied again and again by producers. And that’s when they decide they need to start a “whispering campaign.” With the help of other animals, including some sneaky rats, they start whispering under the tables of a high end restaurant to get people talking and asking questions about a new upcoming musical, written by a new and mysterious “producer,” Kermit:  Through this campaign, the animals whispered nothing but questions about Kermit and his musical. It is because of this whispering that quite a buzz is created around him, bringing more awareness to their musical, and setting the right people down their path to help them actualize their dreams. While we may not have the friends of Kermit to help us get the word out about our businesses, we have something just as effective: Influencer marketing. Here’s how you can use it to bring awareness to your business… 1. Find people that are speaking directly to your clients but are not offering a competing product. 2. Make an offer for what you would pay them to make a video talking about your product or service. 3. If they’re not a user of your product or service, then don’t ask for a testimonial, but instead, just ask them to talk about it to their audience. Just like the Kermit’s whispering campaign, you can ask them to ask questions to their audience: Have you seen this? Have you heard about this? What do you think about this? The goal is to get them to generate conversation around your product or service and it’s those questions that make people curious and curiosity drives people. So use influencer marketing to get people to talk about you and raise awareness!  Since the Muppets make me feel nostalgic about old TV shows, it also makes me nostalgic when I think of how commercials have changed over the years.  While the current generation of kids can now skip ads with a simple click of a button, most of us before them had to sit through every commercial that crossed our TVs. Kids now may find this annoying, but we came to use them to our advantage. This was how we learned about all the new toys or were educated on environment issues (Anyone else love Smokey the Bear? If nothing else, it gave us an exact 2 minutes and 32 seconds for a restroom break and to grab a snack. All that to say, commercials were a normal part of life for most of our childhoods! So today, here’s what you can post on social media, on your blog, or in an email: Fill in the blank: My favorite commercial/ad when I was a kid was ___________ . OR My favorite commercial/ad now is ___________________. I can’t wait to hear what you learn about your audience through this fun, nostalgic conversation!  Now Is the Time to Make LinkedIn a Strategic Priority. Here’s Why – Facebook. TikTok. Instagram. Pinterest. We discuss so many different avenues to connect socially with others, but LinkedIn doesn’t always get center stage in the way that it should. Here’s why and how you can start using LinkedIn for growth! Read More How Often Should You Post on Instagram Every Week? – Your frequency on Instagram can depend on the size of your following, your goals, and your audience. Luckily we found this cheat sheet to help you decide exactly what Instagram strategy will work best for you. 😉 Read More Key themes we heard from global retail experts at NRF 2023 – Whether you’re in retail or not, some lessons can be learned from the experts who are measuring the hottest trends and know what’s coming next. Want to know what’s in store for our retail futures? Read on! Read More Did you reply back yet with your guess for “The Button Game”? I can’t wait to see your reply and how many clicks you think I am going to get! Alex Branning Branning Group alex@branninggroup.com |