Business Advisor, Speaker & Author Loren Weisman organizes, optimizes and implements individualized branding, marketing and content plans for start up and established businesses as well as individual clients and entrepreneurs. You can see more from Loren at Lorenweisman. You’ve worked with clients as diverse as musicians, authors, restaurants and real estate. What are some marketing aspects that are unique for particular industries? Are there any aspects that are universal?

With engagement and vicarious connection being at the root of marketing for all industries, I find a universal message and goal is to market to those that are already fans or customers, those that are familiar with you but have never converted and those that have no idea who you are. That consideration in marketing allows for the highest conversions and continued engagement. The unique elements come in to those personalized messages and marketing pieces that tie in to the love of food, the love of music or authors that were inspiring. Those that direct their message and their sell by digging in to how they got in to what they do makes for a more unique and personalized message over recycled content.

You work with your clients to solidify the fundamentals of content branding

Can you speak a bit about personal brands, artists as brands, and why a solid content brand strategy is important for establishing trust and real connections?

Being able to define that brand in content, in logo, in color scheme and in contiunity across online and physical elements as well as having a uniformity across websites and social media helps to enhance the trust of the personal brand. With so many smaller brands mixing up images, typesets and bios that confuse potential customers, the consitency makes for comfort in the eyes of both the exisiting customer and new fan.

The uniformity of a person or business’s tagline, one liner, short bio, call-to-action and logo aspects also will optimize that branded content across signatures on numerous pieces of content. Search “Business Advisor, Speaker and Author” in Bing, Google or Yahoo. (No money was spent, this was all correct online branding). From the search results of content to the videos to the photos, you will find me showing up in all of them and that is because of the uniformity in that branding. When people can search on what you do or what you offer and it comes to you, that can increase trust much more than asking someone to search on your name alone. You work a lot with clients in the entertainment industry, who are sometimes more in the background than the spotlight. Similarly, marketers and brand ambassadors are supposed to be felt but not seen, meaning their efforts aren’t always recognized.

What part do marketers and brand ambassadors play in a long-term brand strategy?

They are the blueprint, the foundation and the support for everything that is built on top of it. The branding and marketing that is put in place, organized, optimized and templated to make each piece of content that much easier to create allows for a great compounding effect that takes less time, costs less money and allows for a higher and expanded reach.

The website Inc.com published an article in 2014 called “To Be A Great Marketer, You Have To Be A Great Leader First.” The author states, “Many CMOs say that thinking and acting like a business leader is one of the characteristics most integral to their success.”

Can you describe a bit what “acting like a business leader” might look like, and why it’s important for a business to thrive?

In acting like a leader, it is about stepping outside of the bubble many get caught in and having an understanding of how marketing and marketing content could be viewed in others ways than a business may intend it. To me, acting like a business leader is all about resonating with the vision of the brand, the product or service and the message, while looking at how that message could be mis-construed, about how it may be over-saturated and over used and in turn, looking at that business with a different set of glasses and a view to enhance and stand out in today’s market. In that same article, they talk about how an effective CMO is continually looking to improve – “a mindset of 180-degree turns and 100-percent improvement.”

Has it always been this way, in your experience? Or has the business world shifted to encourage real innovation and risk-taking?

Even in the highest profit times, the best CMO’s are looking to create the new content and marketing to be ready to go when those times change. The ever renaissance man or woman that is looking around the bend or as I like to call it, constantly preparing your preventative maintenance marketing plans to be applied soon!

As an entertainment marketer, much of your work relies on your clients being perceived as cool or with-it. How can some less sexy industries tailor their strategies to popular trends, without losing their identity or seeming tacky? Sexy is in the eye of the beholder. While an insurance firm employee might not have the purple mohawk or someone wearing a tight shiny catsuit, that cool appeal can still shine through on engagement. As social media has oversaturated a great deal of the entertainment markets, the sexy and cool definitions have expanded and opened up to a wider array of options. Look at The Big Bang Theory… Scientists can be sexy, knowledge can be sexy and even facts can be sexy these days, even if the person delivering the information or content may not follow those older standards. The best leaders work by motivating others through.

What are some different ways marketers and brand ambassadors help to motivate an entire organization?

Communication, communication and communication. By sharing what they see and what they have found out from others outside of the board rooms of how a brand is being seen, these marketers and brand ambassadors supply some of the most useful data to these organizations by sharing how the execution is being seen by different people and different audiences. This is a major motivator and helpful tool for motivation in knowing what to create or how to share information to achieve the best engagement and conversion. Great leaders are known for showing initiative, as well. Marketers frequently have to seize a moment, working quickly and intuitively.

What are some different areas where marketers frequently have to show initiative?

What are the potential rewards? Any risks of showing TOO much initiative?

Marketers that stay on top of the messages and content as well as how the messages and content are being received have the best pulse of that business. However, changing horses midstream or not testing a campaign or strategy for a set amount of time can back fire. Those over anxious types or those bringing to many different ideas to the table all at once can confuse an audience. That can make for a great risk of that businesses brand. Communication and confidence are two of the most indispensable traits for business leaders.

How do these traits manifest themselves in marketers?

Can you give a short A/B scenario, of a confident-communicative marketing leader vs. the alternative?

Honesty and updating the client or business about what is being done, why it is being done, how it is being done, where it is being done and when it is being done is your a scenario. To keep everyone in the loop about what is happening will allow the client to know if changes need to be made and when those changes should be made. The B scenario is that lone wolf marketer that plays in their own sandbox and doesn’t keep communication clear. The one that runs plans that give the business no idea of what was done right if it works and at the same time or more often, gives the business no information or data about what went wrong and why, when things fail.

You’ve also got a background in public speaking. How has that impacted your marketing career?

How have you integrated some of the things you’ve learned as a public speaker into your marketing practice?

Speaking has helped me learn to adapt my message and my branding strategies with clients that much more. As I have watched audiences engage in certain areas, I have also watched as I lost them in others. Learning how to craft a message for a given audience or craft a message to adapt to different types of people in the same audience has given me a better view of branding as a whole. It is also the number one reason that I no longer speak with powerpoint presentations. I have my notes and my bulletpoints, but I craft the talk to those I am speaking with. Just as a marketer needs to craft the brand, content and message to his or her audience.

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