How to Build Your Brand with UC

Editor's Notes

• #4: Put simply, your “brand” is what your prospect thinks of when he or she hears your brand name.  It’s everything the public thinks it knows about your name brand offering—both factual (e.g. It comes in a robin’s-egg-blue box), and emotional (e.g. It’s romantic). In fact, Brands are considered better if they start orcganically calling it something else like FedEX, or Tarje instead of Fed Ex or Target. And you know you’ve arrived as a brand if your brand becomes an acceptable verb like Google or Xerox. In 2012 companies spent $140 billion building their brands. Why is this so important????
• #6: The first reason branding is so so important is that brands outlive products. No matter how many times your product line changes or business model adjusts, your brand, good or bad, will stay the same. Here are two great examples:AT&T was founded by Alexeander Graham Bell in 1875 when he invented the telephone selling phone services. Today, 138 years later, AT&T is a corporate giant with a wide product line of servicesApple, founded in 1976 and had its first commercial hit, the Apple II in 1977. Today its still apple with the same core ideas, different product line.
• #7: The second reason brand is so important is that they are valuable. The business world is full of stories of companies that become successful and then sell for a fortune. Brands can not only be expensive to build, but can take a very long time to become famous which is why they have such great value. It’s oftentimes much easier for companies to purchase and reuse a known brand that to wait till theirs matures. GoldmanSachs and Morgan Stanley helped Ford sell the brands to India based Tata Motors for $2.56 Billion.Kraft bought Cadbury-19.5 Billion
• #8: Another importance of brand is that it can create differentiation all on its own. Some companies exude performance, quality, innovation, value, or convenience purely by their name. Take a look at how these two brands differ in you mind even if you’ve never owned or experienced one.
• #9: Data from Kantar Media to show just how big of an idea branding is. The average company spends a little over 10% of its revenues on branding.
• #10: Brand marketing continues to evolve. Here are the top 5 trends in brand marketing today. Mobile-Mobile friendly websites, designing content with mobilily in mind, exciting tech like geofencing!Social MediaSEO-- if you don’t know about keywords, keyphrases, influence, metadescriptions, and link building than you need to do some homework on SEOEmail Content-Content is King! Whitepapers, blogposts, webiars, ebooks, datasheets, videos and much, much more47% of email is opened on a mobile device. 61% of consumers now read at leas some emails on a mobile. 30% exclusively, yet only 11.84% of newsletters use mobile responsive designs. Forecasters say that 78% of email users will access email via mobile by2017.Mobile friendly websites, designing content with mobilily in mind, exciting tech like geofencing!
• #11: AdvertisingAgeAs you can see, mobile advertising rising quickly with no end in sight.
• #12: Here is a great study done by Forrester that shows the change in marketing spending. Note the steep increase in Mobile and Social media.
• #13: So now lets take a look at what really makes a great brand. And to do that, lets take a quick look at a company that does it better than most, Disney.
• #14: There are several key factors that Disney has done to make it’s brand adored world wide:Great Storyteller: Every facet of Disney is focused around a great story; from their movies, tv programming, and down to each ride in their theme parks. Quality content: Disney rarely puts out anything that is below par. You can be pretty sure that if the Disney logo is attached, it’s going to be great.Customer Service Focus: If you’ve ever been to a Disney Park, you know that everyone there is friendly, courteous and helpful. The employees pride themselves on creating a great customer experience. Awareness: Disney keeps a close eye on customer perception and handles any issue immediately. Mind the details: Everything in a Disney park is place with a purpose. From the line queing, to the location of trash cans, details are key. It’s crazy how clean Disney parks are kept with as many people in attendance.On the cutting edge: Disney is always using cutting edge technology for their rides and movies to go along with the classics. And last is consistency. Lets take a closer look at this one.
• #15: The key factor that resonates in all of the branding research is consistency. Successful brands do what Disney does and they do it every single day. Lets take a look at BMW:When you think about BMW, you think about performance and luxury in all that they produce. That’s because of consistency in product, customer service, message (Ultimate Driving Machine), tone and look.
• #17: Building a brand requires several things to be successful. From simple things like a company logo, to the complex like the company website and social presence. These things can be very time consuming and expensive to develop. One tool that many people do not consider is a Unified Communications system. UC can help with brand building AND protection with minimal investment of money and time.
• #18: Switchvox, whether deployed in the cloud or on premises, is Digium’s turn-key IP PBX designed for the small and medium business. Built on Asterisk, the worlds mos successful open source communications engine, Switchvox is considered the best value in UC today.
• #19: There are 5 key things that really separate Switchvox from the competition:All Features Included - Switchvox solutions provide unmatched features including our real-time, web-based Switchboard. All these features are included at no extra cost. Switchvox also has many products in one so you don’t need extra servers for voicemail, mobility, conferencing, faxing, etc. This saves money and decreases the complexity of the overall solution design.Ease of Use– Switchvox solutions are completely web-based and provide a very intuitive user and admin interface. There is inline help throughout the Admin and User interfaces to provide the help you need right at your fingertips. And because it is web-based you can reference the help content side by side with the interface for easy setup. That applies to users and admins. This obviously makes training new users a breeze.Interoperability– Our solutions are standards-based which provides easy integration between other standards-based vendors. Where possible we use standards-based protocols like SIP, XMPP, T.38, etc. to allow our customers tremendous flexibility when deploying a new solution or allowing them to possibly reuse existing equipment to save on upfront costs.
• #20: Integration/Customization– Switchvox provides integration with several applications out of the box to increase productivity and streamline day-to-day activities. We also have a public website dedicated to development resources for Switchvox. We use open API integration to allow customers to develop solutions unique to the their needs.Mobile Applications (iPhone, Android & Blackberry)Firefox IntegrationSwitchboard (Pre-configured Panels)Switchboard (Custom Panels) Switchvox Developers CentralFuture Proof – Switchvox solutions guarantee that you don’t waste a penny of your investment. You have both software and hardware migration paths as your business grows so you wont need to worry about a fork lift upgrade in 5-10 years. You can purchase new server hardware from Digium in the future to expand your capacity with minimal cost. If you keep up with your software updates and maintenance, you will also benefit from the latest features we are developing for Switchvox. We typically have 1-2 major feature releases per year.
• #21: Now, how can Switchvox help you build your brand? First, it can help you make a great first impression.
• #22: Switchvox includes a very powerful Interactive Voice Response System or IVR. The Switchvox IVR is an auto-attendendt (press 1 for this, 2 for that), but it is also much, much more. The IVR allows a company of any size to create enterprise level interactive customer phone portals that can retrieve information from you database, create payment over the phone, automate reminder calls and more. Record and Import professional voice talent and have multi-language support.
• #23: Branding expert Taylor King of Inward Strategic Consulting told Forbes, “Nothing is worse than having to repeat details of a problem again and again.”Service your customers better by integrating all kinds of applications in with your phone system. Now you can have customer information including conversation notes pop up from your CRM when a customer calls to better arm your employees and create an awesome customer experience.
• #24: UC can also help you sell your company story.
• #25: Switchvox includes customizable music on hold and messaging so you have control of what your customers here every step of the way through your processes. You control the messaging, and thus, the story that is told to your customers.
• #26: One way UC shines when it comes to brand building is by supporting your marketing campaings
• #27: All you need to do is assign a campaigns a unique phone number and Switchvox can create unique call routing, messaging and reporting for that campaign
• #28: Want to know how many of your customers are calling in because of your new banner/radio/tv ad? Switchvox can give you that valuable detail on a scheduled or on demand bases. Cre
• #29: On the Switchboard you can view real time statistics to see who’s calling in from that promotion right now! How long have they been waiting? Who is talking to them and much, much more!
• #30: Reports can be in many forms. Need charts and graphs or just the raw data? Switchvox can produce both on the fly!
• #31: One last way UC can help build your band is by helping you manage your brand presence in a mobile environment
• #32: With today’s mobile workforce and rapid growth of tablets and smart phones, mobility is possibly the most important benefit from UC and is the number one factor driving adoption of UC by SMBs. Gone are the days of answering a call only at your desk phone. Easily transfer your work calls to your mobile device. Make calls as if calling from your office extension, even when that call originates from a mobile device. This is an ideal application where you can hide your cell phone number. This helps protect your company’s name and brand since all calls, whether they originate from a cell phone or from an office desk phone, will display your company’s caller ID information. With advanced UC features such as Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC), you have advanced features such as seeing employee presence on mobile devices, transferring calls to another extension or external number, and even recording calls remotely. FMC pairs another phone or multiple phones with your primary office extension. And, this feature is often supported on multiple mobile phone platforms – truly allowing your employees to use the mobile phone of choice for business communications.
• #33:  One of the many benefits of presence is that it can help you as a business owner or manager keep tabs on staff productivity to ensure you customers are being helped like you expect. Nothing kills brands quicker than bad customer service.
• #34: You’ve seen what UC can do to build your brand, now check out what it can do to PROTECT your brand.
• #35: Switchvox comes standard with really effective training tools to help you ensure that customers are being handled as you expect and that poor customer service is not damaging your brand.With special permissions, you can record, monitor, whisper, and barge in on your employees calls!Record: with a push of a button you can instantly record an employees call. If you want to record all of their calls, Switchvox can do that without you having to do anything!Monitor: Listen in on callsWhisper: Listen in and talk to your employee without the customer hearing! Give your employee help during a live callBarge: If your employee is asking for help, barge in on the all and give them your support.
• #36: Ok, now as an added bonus, here are the top 10 branding blunders of all time! Info gathered from dailyfinance.com http://www.dailyfinance.com/photos/top-25-biggest-product-flops-of-all-time/#!slide=982919