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Posts By: Danny Braught

Unspoken Rules of Mediocrity (and How to Break Them)

I’ve always been kind of a rule-breaker. It’s gotten me into trouble from time to time. 

But more so, breaking the rules has allowed me to shift from mediocre living to a meaningful and super fulfilling existence. No matter the endeavor (from small business digital marketing to improving your life experience), there are a few “rules” that are outdated and counter to the limitless possibilities available to us as community leaders.

Rules Were Made to be Broken

If you’re into figuring out how to maximize your life, I have three rules you’ve probably heard of that you might be interested in BREAKING.

1. Don’t make waves. I’m not advocating for being a bull in a china shop (and certainly try not to be an a$$hole), but make the waves. Have a purpose. Find your team. Get clear on your vision and take action from a place of integrity. 

2. Listen to your friends and family. They mean well, but unconscious fears from friends and family can block your success and direction. Consider any input from your loved ones while using your own compass (and ideally strong data sets) to guide you. They’ll respect you for it. 

3. Don’t push yourself too hard. I’m not telling you to burn yourself out, but I am here to encourage you to find your edge. Push yourself to work smarter, not harder. Study the people you admire, emulate new business models, and take action in areas of your life where you might not be challenging your growth. 

Resources for Creating Your Own Rules

Review some of the cognitive biases and rules you typically follow that could be holding you back. To help you out with this, here are a few resources I love.

Read: Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller 

Listen: Impact Theory: How to Master Your Negative Thoughts and Use Them for Good

Life Hack: “The Two-Minute Rule” – If a task comes to your plate that will take less than two minutes (start to finish), just do it. This keeps your list of ‘“I’ll do it later” tasks from piling up. 

Cheers,

Danny Braught
CEO, LMH Agency

P.S. If you enjoyed this and would like to connect sometime, here’s a link to my calendar.

Integrity: The Intangible Key to Small Business Success

small business digital marketing

For me, the most meaningful part of running a digital marketing agency for local businesses is not the day-to-day strategy. 

It’s actually in the coaching relationships we have with our clients. Not only does it help them grow through localized search engine optimization, it often leads to profound personal growth as well.

The Art of Integrity

A topic that comes up a lot is integrity. It’s a moral imperative and a highly lucrative one in so many ways. I read a quote recently that I really loved: “Integrity is the cure for unhappiness.”

It really got me thinking. Because it’s something we really encourage and practice around here—integrity, authenticity, quality, and serving our community. 

Leading with these values in mind can make a big difference in the way we approach our work and lives. 

And really…they allow you to have way more fun in the process. Just some food for thought as you pave the path to sustainable business growth and more predictable income.

A few great quotes to keep you motivated:

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”
– Simon Sinek

“Identify your problems, but give your power and energy to solutions.”
– Tony Robbins

“Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is. Know your business and industry better than anyone else in the world. Love what you do or don’t do it.”
– Marc Cuban

I’m also loving this podcast episode from Ed Mylet: Success Requires No Apologies, Failure Permits No Alibis

Cheers,

Danny Braught

CEO, LMH Agency
P.S. If you enjoyed this and would like to connect sometime, here’s a link to my calendar.

How to Get Lucky in Business (and Life)

local digital marketing

Luck is an interesting concept. When you’re playing the Google algorithms to quickstart your growth, it may feel like local digital marketing for your small business is a bit of a gamble. 

I also think there’s another perspective to consider. 

So much of what we come to call “luck” in marketing is actually the result of thousands of micro-actions that add up to what’s possible in both your business and your life.  

Simply put—your daily efforts put you in a position where “luck” is more likely to find you. It’s about slowing down and optimizing the little things.

3 Tips to Improve Your Odds

Here are the top three lessons I’ve personally learned about luck that have changed my life (and might change yours too):

Be here now.
Distractions take us out of the present with our clients, family, or friends and can have us missing out on the golden moments of our lives. Limit them. Tap in. You’ll be surprised how much you can find.

Take action on small opportunities.
Such a simple concept that it’s easy to miss. When you’ve checked into what’s happening here and now in relation to your goals, moments of opportunities come up again and again. Pay attention and act when they arise so you don’t get left behind.

Visualize success.
Focus on what you want and, more importantly, why you want it. Visualizing where you want to go and your personal path to success can give you unshakeable optimism so you can find the right idea, avenue, or team and easily crush your goals. 

Get Even Luckier

Here are a few of my favorite tools that might help bring you more luck and success:

The Finimize App – This is my absolute favorite finance app that gives you tools and insights to make smarter financial decisions. 

Maximize Business Value Podcast: Things Business Owners Need to Know Pt 1

GasBuddy – Find the lowest gas prices in your area and save tons of money (seriously, you’ll thank me later). 

Cheers,

Danny Braught

CEO, LMH Agency

P.S. If you enjoyed this and would like to connect sometime, here’s a link to my calendar.

P.P.S. If you really enjoyed this, subscribe to our newsletter to get more content like this straight into your inbox.

How To Find Your Brand Voice

 Ah, it’s good to be back. Today, we’re going to be talking about something I’m pretty passionate about in the world of marketing: branding. Specifically, brand voices. My introduction to the world of branding was everything it should be thanks to my branding professor in college. He was exciting, inspiring, and funny. He was passionate about branding and had an extremely successful career in it. To make it short, let’s just say I never missed one of his classes. Wherever you are, Professor Diego, I hope you are doing well. Let’s get back on topic and take a look at what makes your brand voice so important.

Why Is Your Brand Voice Important?

Well, I’m glad you asked. Your brand voice is the lifeblood of your overarching brand. You may want your brand to be confident, simple, and straightforward, but without the proper brand voice, nobody will know! Take a look at Apple and the iPhone. Every year we get a new iPhone and they sell millions of them, even with minimal changes year after year. There are phones out there way more capable than even the best iPhone. So why does Apple continue to have so much success? Their brand voice. Apple’s brand voice is confident, intimate, and it communicates quality. We don’t buy the iPhone because we know all the technical specs. If we really cared about that, most of us would probably look elsewhere. We buy iPhones because of the way their brand voice makes us feel. 

Now, let’s take a look at how to determine your brand voice.

First steps

Your brand voice should be different from your competition. (I mean…duh)  At the very least, it’s an identifying characteristic. At the very best, people are choosing your products or services over your competition simply because of the way you communicate. Wow, who knew marketing was that simple? So how do we act on this? First, take a birds-eye view of your content and compare it directly to your competitors. What’s different about your web page? Your social media? Your core values? Literally anything that you could differentiate from your competitors.

Take note of everything different about your content. Once you’ve done that, you’re one step closer to having a unique brand voice. Here are some examples of content you should be analyzing:

  • Core values 
  • Website 
  • Promotional videos 
  • Promotional graphics
  • Print ads
  • Business cards 
  • Newsletters

Once you’ve completed a thorough analysis of your branded content, we can move on.

Narrow it down

Now let’s take a look at these unique characteristics you’ve taken note of. Without disclosing too much about our ultra top secret branding processes, I’m going to guide you through the process of choosing the best words to describe your brand. First, make a list of words that describe you. I’m talking like 20-30 words. Select your 15 favorite words from that list and continue narrowing it down until you have 3-5 words. To quote the late great Billy Mays, “but wait there’s more.” When you have your 3-5 favorite adjectives, I want you to hop onto google and find strong synonyms. Don’t be excited, be passionate. Don’t be original, be authentic. See what I’m saying?  The key to the branding process is to do it differently and make sure people know about it. When you set a foundation of strong adjectives it trickles up and makes everything you do with those words stronger. Call it “trickle up marketing.” I really need to trademark that…

Still stuck? Let’s phone a friend.

In the world of marketing, surveys are always your friend. Nothing compares to a good ol’ fashion focus group. Surveys and focus groups are a fantastic way to obtain valuable information about what customers think about your brand, your voice, and more. Other benefits include:

  • Honest answers
  • Learning consumer mindsets on competitors 
  • Large reach

After you have narrowed down the list, you have an idea of what your brand voice is. Feel free to expand on each of these words with synonymous adjectives to give your team a better idea of what you’re going for. 

For the visual learners… 

Now we have to come up with some guidelines for the copywriters that will be responsible for communicating your message to consumers. To do that, we’ll need to create a brand voice chart. A brand voice chart outlines the dos and don’ts of communicating with your brand voice. You can easily create a brand voice chart in google drive or word, whichever you prefer. Here’s an example of a brand voice chart. It really just compares what you are to what you aren’t. Simple as that. It’s important to have a brand voice chart available to every member of your team. It’s equally important to have consistency with your brand voice. Consider printing out copies of the chart and handing them out to your team members.

Now that you’ve got your brand voice chart ready to go, make sure you go over some examples of work that really hit the mark of your brand voice. If your content creators have a vague idea of how and what to communicate, you lose individuality and, therefore, money. So there you have it. You’ve gone through the process of identifying your brand voice. But maybe you’re not a fan of what you’ve come up with. Not a problem, we’ve got a fix for that!

Starting from scratch

Now, let’s run through a hypothetical situation. Say you went through the process we just went over and then decided you want to change your brand voice entirely. How would you start from scratch? First, you need to take a look at a handful of external factors that are critical to developing your brand voice from scratch. Start off by taking a close look at your target market. Who are the major players and how does their brand voice help them attract clients? What kind of voice is there an opportunity for? Make sure you have a good idea of how to communicate to your target audience what problem you solve in the industry.

Take a deep dive into researching demographics and psychographics to fully understand the people you’re targeting.  After that, it’s time to come up with a voice that works well for your industry. If you’re an energy drink company, you need to be exciting. Red Bull, Monster, and Rockstar are all heavily involved in extreme sports and have powerful and exciting brand voices. This shows that marketing with extreme sports can be successful. At the same time, while the major players within the industry focus on extreme sports, you could be supporting an entirely different industry. This takes us to my next point.

Avoid copying your competitors. 

Like I stated at the beginning, individuality is key to stealing customers from your competitors, If you copy what they do, what reason do they have to switch? Make sure your brand voice is easily identifiable, attractive, and consistent. 

Look for outside inspiration.

Take a look around and gather examples of branding that resonates with you. It’s okay to take inspiration from other companies, in fact, we encourage it with our branding process. We encourage our clients to make lists of logos, songs, packaging, movie characters and more that they feel represent their brand and what they stand for. If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything. Word to Alexander Hamilton.

And there you have it. Follow these simple steps and you’ll have a strong idea of your current brand voice and how to change it! Looking for more help? Get in touch with our team at LMH Agency. Cheers!