To the average person, the world of fashion can seem quite strange. However, despite the eccentric nature of this industry, it’s huge. The fashion industry in the UK alone is worth over £20 billion a year. Because of its size and influence, there are some valuable tips that marketers in any space can learn from fashion:

Trends Come and Go

Trends are one of the first things most people associate with fashion. Every year, it seems like there’s something new that makes its way from the runways and catches on with mainstream consumers. While it may seem like the biggest trend ever at the time, chances are by the same time next year, something else will have already replaced it.

After reading the title of this post, you probably clicked wondering “how’s he going to spin this to make it right?” But the truth is I’m not going to spin anything. I mean what I said—customers do not care about you. Let me explain.

When you visit almost any small business website, you’re met with the same old content. “Welcome to our site. We’ve been in business blah blah. We are known for blah blah blah. We are committed to excellence blah blah.”

Social media marketing is a pretty tough balancing act. On the one hand, you want to use tools like Facebook and Twitter to build brand awareness and increase your business’ bottom line. On the other hand, you don’t want to risk annoying your target audience by constantly flooding their stream with advertisements for your company.

That’s why I encourage businesses to take a balanced approach to their social media marketing.
Look, no one signs up for Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network so they can be advertised to all day long. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you can start to truly engage with your target audience and build deeper relationships with them.

To prove his point about the lack of originality on the part of advertisers, Martin Lindstrom taped 60 different car commercials produced by 20 different car companies. He created a montage of these 60 car commercials into a two-minute reel to see if he could tell which clip came from which car company. He couldn’t.

Last week, we discussed some of the major symptoms of bad marketing. You might have realized that your company is suffering because of bad marketing, and you might be wondering what you can do to avoid more bad marketing. Later on this month, we’ll get into some specific tactics to help you overcome your past marketing mistakes, but today, I want to focus on changing the way you think. Because that’s where it all starts. Until you get in the right mindset, you will keep making the same mistakes time and time again. You need to understand the following 4 truths about marketing.

Bad, ineffective marketing is all around us. I see the results of it on a daily basis. It’s the reason people end up contacting me. They’ve tried other marketing tactics in the past, and they just haven’t seen any results. So, it’s my job to step in and identify the problems with their marketing and create solutions to get the results they desire.

Are you suffering because of bad marketing? Here are 5 common symptoms to watch for.

When it comes to marketing your company, you have two basic options: you can either handle all of your marketing in house or you can hire a marketing firm to do it for you. Most companies opt to hire an outside marketing consultant for several reasons:

• .They don’t have the time to handle their own marketing
• They lack the in-depth knowledge to create effective marketing strategies
• They don’t have the budget to hire in-house marketing consultants

I’ve spent quite a bit of time on this blog venting about companies who are afraid to take chances and afraid to stand out in the crowd. Too many companies want to “play it safe” and blend in with all their competitors. But the fact is that’s not safe at all. Blending in is the most dangerous thing you can do. It hampers your success and makes you completely replaceable in the eyes of your target audience.

So, you know that it’s important to stand out from your competition, but how exactly can you do that?

I received a great direct mail piece from marketing strategist Michele Pariza Wacek, who wrote an interesting article about common flubs business owners make with their marketing campaigns and sent it through the mail. It was essentially a blog post, delivered by post. Not something we've ever thought to do at our Internet marketing office here in Houston. It was actually pretty cool. According to Michele, most unsuccessful campaigns can often be traced back to one of these three missteps. Has your team committed any of these marketing cardinal sins?

1) Your Target Market is Too Broad

Good marketers identify a niche and pursue that one until they've saturated that small market. Then, and only then, do they pursue another one. Even if you sell a product that everyone can use, you'll wear yourself out and waste your money trying to sell to everyone. Pursuing everyone leads to "media waste," reaching people you don't really want or need to reach. Narrow it down however you can — gender, age, ZIP code, household income or people who support nonprofits, buy green products, or enjoy art festivals — to focus your marketing campaign.

You will need commitment and a determination to succeed in order to start a business. Those personal traits will also need to be complimented by passion, innovation, courage and the ability to set yourself goals.

Passion

Are you totally passionate about your business idea? Do you absolutely believe in what you are selling, or the service you are providing? Have you got an in–depth knowledge of your product, your competition and the market you are entering? And, once you’ve got your venture up and running – do you have the passion and the energy to keep going when others are feeling tired and want to give up?   Passion is an essential trait in any entrepreneur.

I keep hearing a lot of talk these days about how businesses would love to increase traffic to their web site, so I’m going to share 4 more ways that I’ve found to be very effective.

1. Blogging - It doesn’t take an award winning creative copywriter to write short articles about your product or service. All it takes is a little time researching a topic and then writing an article that will be of interest to your target market. Basically anyone can write and submit blog articles, but if you post quality articles on your blog, you will attract the right type of visitors to your web site and establish yourself and your company as an expert in your field.

Vlogging - You can also do video blogs or “vlogging” to engage your audience. With the advent of high-speed internet and social media networks, vlogging has become a great way to stay in front of your target audience.

Blog Comments – In order to get feedback from your customers and those who peruse your site, you have to add Blog Commenting to your web traffic game plan. On any blog, you will almost always find a "comments" link at the end of each post, which encourages dialogue between other consumers and the producers themselves. This dialogue keeps the discussion fresh and friendly and adds a human element to the World Wide Web.

In my mind Branding is all about 3 things... words, Images, and emotions. Consumers will remember what you say about your brand or even what they've heard. This could be a radio spot or even a word of mouth referral. They will remember what they've seen. This could be an advertising campaign, logo, brochure, and web site. But mostly they will remember how the combination of those make them feel.

To succeed in building a brand, it is necessary to understand the needs and wants of your customer. So, do your research and create a message that separates you from your competition. Then repeat that message over and over again using every form of media you can.