Tamara McCleary quotes: pretty much a masterclass in internet marketing.
“There is nothing permanent except change. Customers change, competitors come and go, and products and services become obsolete as newer, improved versions are brought to market. But, it’s not as if everything ‘out there’ is evolving while people remain static. We’ve also changed. Our needs, wants, desires, and expectations as a culture have evolved as technology has expanded the landscape of what is possible.”
“The fearless are merely fearless. People who act in spite of their fear are truly brave.”
“Listen, learn, leap and use data analytics to build better customer relationships. It only takes one bad experience for a customer to turn away from your brand and choose a competitor.”
“How do you avoid making mistakes in the customer journey? Businesses can leverage the data they have to drive consistently exceptional customer experience. It is important to make customers feel respected, understood, and valued, so they’ll come back for more.”
“What you have to do is spend the majority of your time actually doing the work, not spending all the time on social media.”
“Popularity will not pay your mortgage.”
“What’s going to profitable B2B influencer advertising and marketing appear to be in a post-pandemic world, and what can entrepreneurs do right now to be prepared? An extended-term influencer program will permit your model to create true model advocates, highly effective model evangelists, and raving followers.”
“The three biggest mistakes brands make when using influencer marketing are: focusing on the wrong metrics; a fatal lack of clarity around who is most influential to the target audience; and attempting to micromanage influencer messaging, or shape messaging to fit the corporate voice rather than the influencer’s voice.”
“Tap into the key thought leaders that your target audience already knows, likes, and trusts. Trust being the keyword here that ultimately leads to conversions. I encourage the brands I work with to invest in social listening and research to correctly identify the influencers that are most capable of helping them move the needle.”
“The most successful leadership embodies memorable, connected, compelling communication. Effective communication is the ability to craft your messaging with clarity, to enable your organization to understand, align, and execute quickly. Effective communication is the ability to engage your employees, thereby increasing business productivity. Effective communication is the ability to not only reach your target audience, but create a connection that moves beyond brand awareness to brand loyalty.”
“Becoming a more effective communicator makes for a better leader.”
“An organization that communicates seamlessly both internally and externally will reap the rewards of staying not only current, but also maintain the freshness that is mandated to keep up with the speed of innovation today. In our overcrowded marketplace, may you be the signal in the noise that keeps your organization’s ship on-course.”
“With all the hype, don’t forget the human element.”
“To build relationships that convert, influencers and brands must reveal and display ‘human’ qualities in their communication online. What makes you different? What makes you interesting and worth paying attention to? Imperfection. Imperfection is extremely interesting to us, and it’s the secret success sauce of reality shows. Human beings identify with imperfection and we bond with it, we love watching it, we deem it honest and trustworthy when others admit to it. How can you or your brand capture marketshare by becoming more human-like on social media? Develop the quality of interestingness. Interestingness comes from creating the textures and quirks that humans have. It’s called a personality.”
“Being more ‘human’ brings a level of authenticity and the ability to connect and create community and sharing. Influencers and brands who are looking to build genuine relationships must share a certain vulnerability, an honesty that delivers something to connect with. Human beings connect around faults, disappointment, and challenges because we trust that to be true in comparison to our own experience as a human being. Influencers and brands that always appear perfect and flawless wield far less power and experience less success than those influencers and brands who share all that they are and all that they’re not. Let me just pose the question to you: are you more attracted to and influenced by leaders and brands that are transparent about their failures as well as triumphs or are you more attracted to and influenced by those that only share their triumphs?”
“We are attracted to personalities. Think of your favorite brands. They have a ‘feel’ to them, you’ve come to expect them to not only deliver but entertain you in some way either through their uniqueness, intelligent wit, common sense, or some edgy banter that reassures you that you’re not receiving a formulaic response that has been vetted through the legal department first.”
“Everybody has a voice now and there really isn’t a way we can’t communicate.”
“Building a brand means knowing your story and building and sharing that story.”
“Building a strong personal brand creates freedom and opportunity.”
“As technology evolves and our digital footprints become more robust, crafting a relatable story and managing your reputation is essential for both climbing the corporate ladder or starting your own company. Building a personal brand can improve your professional and private life.”
“Working as a nurse has allowed me to fully understand how people react to a human approach. I felt moved by stories, which ultimately led to my method of brand storytelling. It works beyond the scope of data or analytics; it works to humanize the approach so that you can use technology that people react best to. People don’t want perfection; they want something they can believe in.”
“In a similar way to how someone will tell an interesting story in order to engage people socially, companies use powerful brand narrative that will differentiate product or service in today’s highly-competitive landscape. This allows the audience to be actively engaged with brands in order for them to have a user-friendly experience. When people can understand technology, science and what we’re doing, there is a lot of enthusiasm. This approach to marketing sets a precedent for any aspiring marketer who is looking to put the customer first.”
“The single greatest power we possess is the ability to author our own story.”
“Always be sharing something that is valuable.”
“Trust and meaningful connection are imperative elements in social strategy. When it comes to conversions, popularity and follower metrics are inferior to valuable input and being a part of a larger conversation.”
“Trust converts and being a popular influencer is not enough, you have to engage and create thoughtful conversation.”
“Popularity has never equaled trust, and in fact, popularity on social media does not equal influence. Most of us typically think of marketing to individual people when we discuss business-to-consumer (B2C) and retail. However, who are we marketing to when we market our products and services to an organization? For what purpose are we positioning our story, our message, our ad campaigns and social strategy? Who do we hope to influence? The brand? Who is the brand? To grow our businesses, we are all tasked with influencing another human being to take an action.”
“Human beings make purchasing decisions, not organizations. I’m a human being working for an organization who is in a position to make a purchasing decision to either buy or not buy a product or service from a human being working for another organization. We are selling products or services to people, irrespective of how we label it.”
“The cornerstone of successful marketing and sales is the creation, and delivery of a foundation of trust. Trust executed well not only converts, but significantly shortens the longer gestation sales cycle typical of enterprise sales. Trust cannot be built without communication, without genuine back-and-forth conversation. Trust that converts ultimately positions your organization within the mind of the prospect as the trusted mentor/leader and firmly establishes your brand as the ‘go to’ provider of answers to your prospect’s most pressing problems, and offering unique solves to their greatest points of pain and suffering.”
“Popularity is not leadership, yet leadership is what people are most influenced by. If you want to sell, become the leader your target audience looks to for guidance and good information. Leaders are seen as full of integrity, trustworthy, dependable, helpful, available when it matters, engaged, responsive, and a part of the bigger conversation that is happening.”
“Being a part of the bigger conversation happening outside the walls of the organization is imperative for any brand’s handle on social media, and yet we see that very few brands are positioning themselves as engaged, conversational, responsive thought leaders. Mostly we see brand handles pumping out self-serving content flimsily positioned as content, yet it’s quite transparent to anyone outside of the organization that it’s an advertisement dressed up as content. The biggest mistake brands make is using social media as a platform for free advertising—a complete waste of time and resources with zero return on investment (ROI).”
“How do we feel about people who only talk about themselves or their accomplishments? Right, well, delusions of grandeur are not limited to people. Brands can appear quite narcissistic as well, and repel their target audience in the process. If a brand takes the ‘social’ out of social media, social media initiatives fall flat and fail to convert. Worse, broadcast messaging serves to drive prospects into the hands of the competition harnessing the power of helpfulness, engagement, and genuine conversation on social media.”
“Want that compelling competitive edge on social media? Pay attention to your brand’s persona and conduct an honest appraisal of your brand’s engagement performance. I love the analytics we can now run with social media and the numbers don’t lie. Your brand’s engagement numbers (not reach and impression stats… I’m talking about conversations and actual engagement, not ‘potential views’), can open your eyes to all kinds of missed opportunities. Drop the vanity metrics and courageously look at how your brand’s handle is (or more likely is not) being engaged by your target audience on social media. The good news is, course correction now will be worth its weight in gold later as your conversions soar.”
“What we all want is to feel meaning and significance while finding our place in the shifting sands of an uncertain future. Consumers are more awakened, aware, and conscious of advertising and marketing tactics than at any other time in history.”
“We’re all talking to one another and sharing information on social media. There are no secrets anymore. How many of us actually read a company mission and vision statement these days and believe it? Aren’t we all just a bit skeptical? We don’t believe what someone (or a company) shares about themselves. We, as a society, demand social proof before we hand over our trust (or our wallets).”
“We voraciously read Amazon product reviews before hitting the ‘add to cart’ button, but even then we are skeptical so we check only the ‘verified purchaser’ reviews to tease out the truth. It’s not our first rodeo and we know all too well that ‘likes,’ ‘faves’ and positive reviews can be bought. What we believe are ‘real’ people. In a world where anything can be manipulated we crave authenticity.”
“Today’s business climate demands agility and the proper integration and implementation of technology if you want to remain relevant to your customers. Small-to-medium-size businesses that fail to iterate on themselves will ultimately fail in the marketplace. There’s no room for ‘good enough’ or getting comfy with our offering. Instead, we should be in a climate of ‘this is great, but what’s next?'”
“The biggest barrier to success in business is the inability to forecast the future. We all have our blind spots, and even some of the most brilliant minds in business have grossly missed the mark.”
“We have been living in this pandemic reality for long enough that life back in 2019 seems strange. Remember shopping for clothes? You would take a bunch of clothes to the dressing room, put them right on your body… and the clothes you didn’t want were put back on the racks! No laundering. No sanitization. I will never take my shopping trips for granted again. As a science fiction writer, this is eerily too close to living life in a parallel universe. My mind always jumps to other ‘what ifs.’ Real-life is always stranger than fiction.”
“My mission is to change lives and transform businesses by improving relationships.”
