8 THE CAAR COMMUNICATOR Maybe your shop sells hip clothing rather than only plaid—unless plaid is hip in 2024—and only if “hip” is “hip.” Do you decorate the front of your shop so it’s colourful, or do your customers prefer your shop to be “less exciting” or “staid” while offering excellent service? Style over substance, or substance over style? What type of company are you when it comes to communication? Do you shun social media in favour of shaking hands with everyone who comes through your door? What are your communication characteristics? Do you use social media properly, or prefer to print out flyers? Someone must, because there’s certainly a lot of advertising mail delivered weekly to homes. Like it or not, social media needs to be employed— and not just to see funny cat and dog memes. It would be best to use a few social media apps you are already comfortable with, or, you can try them all because you are daring. Perhaps you can start a blog about what’s going on in your company. Your website… Is it just a website, or an up-todate place that shows off this week’s specials? Consider how you want to be treated when you visit another company’s website. If you are looking for a new pair of work boots, do you want to see an outdated sale for boots no longer offered? No! You want to utilize an up-to-date website that won’t waste your time. When a consumer hears your business name, you want them to think that you “are their go-to place for X-widgets, because I get great service and a better price. And the company listens to what I need and suggests options.” Sometimes, your company has been earmarked for success because it was a pioneer—such as eBay or PayPal. Then again, we’ve also seen many social media sites come and go as people seem to like the hot new thing—Myspace was the most prominent social media site until Facebook came and sent it to the scrap heap of ignominy. What’s Your Strategy? In order to do what you want, you must create a business strategy. And, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it and making lots of money. There is no one way to do things in a business— even if you sell the same product because you and your competitor do so from different locations. If you are across the street from one another, why? Regardless, you need to create a strategy that works best for the unique entity that you are. We need to figure out what your brand story is. Stop the eye-rolling. This is advice on how to take things to the next level, and that means stepping outside of your staid comfort box. To figure out your brand story, we looked at www. coursera.org and noted that people will respond emotionally to a well-crafted story—and that a good brand story will make your marketing more effective. Your brand story does not have to be long-winded. It could be something as simple as “Ag Retail Shop X always has what you need” or maybe more esoteric: “Ag Retail Shop X makes magic a reality.” Whatever. The brand story is something that can be discussed in a few seconds, expanded on a webpage, or used as a tagline on a social media profile. A great example is from Campbell Soup. When it introduced its new Chicken Soup back in the 1930s, it turned the phrase MMM MMM GOOD! A hit with consumers, the company quickly made it their official slogan. Or, as Coca-Cola did, It’s the Real Thing! What’s your brand story? Application Made Easy Suppose you are a rock-crushing company with a brand story that is copyrighted as “I wanna rock.” How do you tell people about yourself? Know your audience. Sometimes social media isn’t for your crowd. Perhaps your audience prefers to hear from your company through door-to-door mail marketing. Two examples are having either the post office or a willing family member deliver it. Or your audience may prefer to hear about it as an ad on TV, the radio, or in an excellent magazine like the CAAR Communicator. You could pick a single method and roll with it, but the best advice we can provide is to market via multiple channels, especially when considering so-called social media. But which social media platform? There are plenty to choose from, and you may not be familiar with all of them. So, choose the ones you are most comfortable with. And then, because it’s not supposed to be easy, choose a social media platform where you believe your audience is most active. Though Facebook/Meta was once the social media site, its audience is older. And if that older audience is whom you wish to market to, have at it. But sometimes younger people have money and farms, too. BRAND MARKETING
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