Bradley H. Smith >

17 personal branding tips (from my Instagram)

There are eleventy kabazillion “personal branding” tips out there and I am currently evangelizing the best 17 I found. Authenticity is the top advice that truly matters: everything else trickles down from authenticity.   

Below are the points, and memes, from my Instagram account. 

1. Be honest and organic. 
2. Be visible and accessible.
3. Identify your unique value proposition.
4. Understand how others see you.
5. Identify your goals to guide your messaging.
6. All of your content should have the same personality.
7. Update your resume to assure it aligns with your brand.
8. Understand your industry inside and out.
9. Speak in your target audience’s tongue.
10. Become a trusted source of information. 
11. Be consistent across all publishing platforms. 
12. Share your expertise without expecting direct ROI.
13. Don't spew marketing: have a conversation when possible.
14. Demonstrate confidence.
15. Promote your content directly.
16. Write and publish. Publish and write.
17. It’s OK to be human and have fun.

Why do we personal brand? Simple...

...because everyone that you meet - especially in B2B - is absolutely going to Google you at some point.

You should try to own what they find.

(No matter how large your baby melon head was.) 

 

To drive growth, branding must be a top-down strategy

Branding is critical to your growth strategy. But how strategic is your branding? 

• Is your brand’s story authentic?
• Is your story being told?
• Is it the “right” story? 

As growth-stage companies focus on developing their teams, product lines and operational systems, executives can lose sight of the deliberate planning and execution needed for effective branding.

But this is no time to take your eye off the brand, considering the reach, speed and superabundance in the mobile, social and web spheres. The digital economy has fundamentally changed how consumers and businesses alike come to recognize brands, research product purchases and develop brand loyalty.

(Image, right: I am ALWAYS personal branding)

Take consumer purchasing decisions. According to Nielsen/inPowered MediaLab, Consumers rely five times more on trusted content today than five years ago when deciding what to buy. This trusted content includes your own communications as well as user reviews, but more often than not, consumers are consulting third-party experts.

In the B2B market, 88% of business buyers say online content has played a moderate to major role in vendor selection, according to a report by the CMO Council and NetLine Corp. Expert influencers also predominate in B2B as well as B2C.

This is the environment in which strategic branding becomes not only more important, but potentially more effective (and measurably so) in helping your company make its mark, build a customer base and differentiate itself from the competition. How you tell your brand’s story is critical. C-level engagement in branding is essential to determine how best to drive interest in your company and solutions among prospects, customers and key influencers.

• Make your brand’s story authentic: Brand authenticity sets the stage for earning familiarity, developing trust and building ongoing relationships in your market. Authenticity must run deep. C-level executives need to prioritize brand communications for the whole team.
• Make the brand the “north star” for your company: The unifying idea about who you are as a business and what you stand for. Far more than just a visual identity or tag line, this is your commitment to the marketplace. Through your brand architecture, all products or subsidiaries roll up to this unifying idea, along with unified messaging aligned with clearly stated corporate values.
• Empower your people with the right direction, structure and processes: Don’t silo the brand. Rather, instill it across all business functions and levels, from the C-suite to brand ambassadors on the front lines of sales and customer service.
• Make sure your marketing and public relations efforts are integrated as well: These functions should be working together on earned, paid and owned media, establishing “connected communications”— an integrated approach across digital, social and offline channels such as events and print media.
• And keep the branding strategy on track with business development: Branding is not an 11th exercise as you go to market or face a crisis situation.

Right story = effective story.

This consistent, multifaceted approach leverages all channels to build an ongoing story, compounding the visibility of your brand and paving the way forward.

Reinforce your brand message continuously along the continuum from familiarity to trust to engagement with content that educates, inspires, advises or supports. Rethink your definition of news, to remain top of mind in an environment of ever-shorter attention spans and ever-faster circulation of information.

Issuing news releases and matte releases at key milestones in your company’s growth is no longer enough to keep your brand in circulation. Innovative companies are also expanding social channels, blogs and content marketing programs—using press releases to extend the reach and impact of these communications efforts, as well.

Distribution drives ongoing message discovery to existing and new constituents. Distribute messages not only to journalists on your targeted media lists, but to analysts and other experts, as well as your brand’s followers on social networks. Compelling, well-crafted messages are found by new audiences, redistributed across peer and professional networks and surfaced in search engine results. They can ripple across the web and back to your site for months after the messages are originally issued.

• Listen to your customers, potential customers and other key audiences in social media to determine what they care about and whose opinions they respect.
• Use social tools to analyze these influencers. Who are they? What are they talking about? These are the bloggers, analysts, trendsetters and other opinion-makers who can help amplify your message and build your community.
• Redouble efforts to establish relationships with key influencers. Bring them ideas that could help their audiences as a group and position your company as part of the solution.
• Use press releases to bring the imprimatur of your brand to bear on new areas of your brand strategy. Issue announcements on branded research, seasonal consumer tip sheets on your web site, B2B thought pieces on your blogs and other branded content.
• Unleash the power of multimedia. Statistics show that rich graphics and video make most communications more effective, including multimedia press releases. Here’s just one way: video increases people’s understanding of your product or service by 74%, according to recent research by Digital Sherpa.3
• Ongoing monitoring will help continually generate new ideas that underscore the value of your brand. An added benefit of monitoring is the capacity of social tools and other web techniques to measure the impact of public relations as never before—whether in terms of traffic driven to your web site, responses to calls-to-action or readings of sentiments surrounding your brand.

Even while driving a continuous flow of brand messaging, companies have to be careful to avoid volume simply for the sake of volume. You’re not going to get anywhere today if you don’t have a credible, unique story...Your content needs to provide value to the reader— be it fresh insight, entertainment or problem solving.

At some point, you may find the very reputation of your brand relying in real time on all these investments in authenticity, consistency and engagement—on your unflagging enterprise- wide brand commitment and empowerment. At times of crisis communications, it is even more critical that you and your customers have a very clear idea of your brand identity, its promise to the market, your corporate values, your key messages and how they all relate. Establish shared responsibility for monitoring to help pick up on stories—good or bad for your brand—very quickly. Plan ahead and have a SWAT team of pre-selected, media-trained company experts in place for rapid response. With crisis response that is true to your company’s inherent values, you may find that brand loyalty wins the day.

Bottomline… Stay top of mind: Brand awareness can help on many levels: building credibility, nurturing relationships, generating demand, driving revenue and attracting stakeholders to your venture. Consistent messaging continuously reinforced across channels and over time will help your brand remain top of mind in your market, with a valuable share of voice not only in the media but in all of the channels that are most relevant to your success.

What brand brings to the C-suite

What is a brand? On a literal level, a brand is a business’s product or service, distinguished from others in the market by branding elements, such as its name, logo and packaging. On a symbolic level, a brand is a business’s personality—the characteristics customers think of when they think of the business, such as “innovative” for Apple, “refreshing” for Coca-Cola or “family” for Disney. And on a business level, the brand is most companies’ single largest asset—one whose health must be monitored continually to protect that asset’s value.

Marketing and communications executives charged with brand monitoring face a deluge of data to sort through. This vast amount of information poses a challenge, but when approached with the proper tools, also provides opportunity. Now, more than ever, you have the ability to refine your brand monitoring strategies to extract the specific information internal stakeholders need to make critical business decisions.

Challenges and opportunities

The growth of online and offline channels has exponentially increased the amount of data available about brands. To keep abreast of a brand’s performance, marketing and communications officers must address what have been dubbed the “four V’s” of data:

1. Volume: the number of influence impressions put in front of customers
2. Velocity: the speed of change to brand perceptions
3. Visibility: the ease with which public opinion of brands can be widely distributed
4. Volatility: the unpredictable impact of consumers’ opinion on brands

Compiling and interpreting this data requires more sophisticated brand monitoring strategies than you may have previously relied on. While this may require more time and investment, the benefits far outweigh the opportunity cost.

Benefits of Brand Monitoring

Brand monitoring offers many benefits to large companies seeking to distill vast amounts of data from disparate platforms and sources into useful insights for the company’s internal stakeholders:

ONE: It reveals how the public perceives the company and provides feedback on the state of your brand reputation—including how perceptions of the brand may differ from the direct feedback from customers. In other words, what is the public saying about your brand “behind your back”? Based on information such as Net Promoter Score and brand preference, what marketing and communications initiatives do you need to put in place in order to better position your company and shore up your reputation?

TWO: It helps guide your content marketing and distribution strategy. When you know what types of information prospects care about, you can develop content that is relevant to their needs, interests and challenges. When you know where and when prospects most often consume and comment on content, you can determine the best times and channels to connect with them.

THREE. It reveals opportunities for differentiation. Monitoring what the public says about your competitors’ brands, as well as your own, reveals which companies your prospects view as your competitors and how your company is positioned within that competitive set. This can help your company identify gaps in the market that represent opportunities for your business.

FOUR. It uncovers new business opportunities, such as identifying adjacent markets, potential partners or possible acquisitions. For example, if major problems with a competitor’s new software release are generating negative publicity, this could be a sales opportunity for your software company.

FIVE. It enables more accurate forecasting and effective scenario planning. Effective brand monitoring alerts key stakeholders on emerging business continuity issues that have the potential to develop into crises; this enables them to take action to either defuse the crisis or respond appropriately to minimize negative effects on the brand’s financial position, reputation, value and share price.

Meeting Stakeholder Needs

Each stakeholder within your company has a different dependency on the brand, and brand monitoring can supply information targeted to each of their needs.

THE CEO

Brand monitoring can provide the CEO with critical data, such as:

• How the company’s brand is performing compared to the competition
• The overall perception of the brand and reputation, such as favorability or unfavorability, as well as brand awareness (both aided and unaided)
• Brand preference and the dimensions on which it is based, such as overall customer service, a robust product portfolio, price or perceived value
• Potential reputational and financial risk to the brand, such as negative “buzz” that could adversely affect the company’s overall market position
• External issues, such as changes to the political, financial and regulatory environment, and how these may create threats or opportunities for the brand

THE CFO

Brand monitoring can supply the CFO with information he or she needs for effective financial management, such as:

• The value of the brand as an asset—including not only the corporate brand, but also the brands of specific products, services, divisions or business units within the company
• The demographics or customer segments the brand(s) attract. Where is business coming from?
• Marketing KPIs, such as return on investment and cost per customer. Which marketing investments drive immediate sales, and which build long-term brand equity?
• Real-time events that could pose financial risk to the brand, such as adverse publicity that could hurt sales or share prices
• Insights to guide long-term strategic decisions, such as coverage sentiment of acquisition targets
• New growth opportunities that can increase revenues and create shareholder value. For example, brand monitoring can point a company that serves low-income and affluent customers toward untapped opportunity in the middle-income market.

THE CRO

Brand monitoring can uncover invaluable information to help the sales team, including:

• Prospects’ and buyers’ biggest challenges and goals, and how well the brand is serving these goals
• Topics to build competitive talking points around
• How buyers perceive the brand and how they perceive the competition
• Insights for successful brand positioning
• Social selling opportunities, discovered by monitoring questions or comments about the brand, its competitors or its industry on social media
• Immediate sales opportunities, such as the chance to reach out to prospects by responding to questions about the brand’s product lines or general questions about the space your brand lives in

Long-term sales opportunities, such as the announcement that a competitor’s brand is abandoning a geographic or demographic market, opening the playing field for your products

THE CMO

Brand monitoring can provide the CMO with essential data to guide the company’s marketing strategy, including:

• Current “share of voice” on hot topics and trends
• What type of content to produce for key segments and personas
• How well the product or the service is meeting customers’ needs
• Identifying net promoters and detractors, understanding overall reputation of the brand
• The customer experience with the brand, product or service
• Insights to help the marketing department surface new sales opportunities and develop more effective sales enablement materials

In addition to driving marketing strategy, the information gained via brand monitoring helps CMOs demonstrate the business value of what they do. Tying content marketing directly to revenue growth is a challenge for most CMOs. Brand monitoring can go beyond measures of reach or followers to determine more effective content and distribution strategies, and help extend the business impact that marketing has on lead generation, new business and revenues.

Consider the case of a publicist seeking exposure for a remote California town trying to build a reputation as a vacation destination. The publicist developed a communications strategy that included using PR Newswire to monitor and target travel and recreation feature writers. The town obtained media coverage including a multi-page, five-article spread in the Sunday travel section of The Los Angeles Times’ print edition, as well as smaller articles in the online edition.

The extensive press coverage with the potential reach of millions in print and online led to increased tourism traffic in the area.

Brand monitoring can help CMOs measure not only the reach and place­ment their marketing campaigns achieve, but also the tangible business outcomes of those campaigns. If this approach can work for a small town in California, imagine the potential impact to your business.

Recommendations

How can your business use brand monitoring to obtain the greatest possible benefit for stakeholders? Here are six recommendations:

ONE. Measure more frequently. Monitoring the brand quarterly or annually brings valuable long-term insights, but these alone aren’t enough in today’s “four V” business environment. Brand monitoring in real time enhances sales effectiveness, enables more effective crisis management and allows your company to quickly take advantage of growth opportunities.

TWO. Measure both online and offline channels. Social listening is important, but in order to maximize brand monitoring’s benefits, you must go beyond social media monitoring alone. To gain a 360-degree view of the media landscape, monitor the full range of media types that audiences consume and contribute to, including social media, blogs, print and online media; online ratings and reviews; television and radio broadcasting; and the effects of public relations outreach.

THREE. Take both a short-term and long-term view. The valuable insights obtained by brand monitoring should not only inform your company’s outreach and crisis response in the short term, but also drive long-range strategic planning.

FOUR. Measure business impact. In addition to quantifying advertising reach or social media followers, brand monitoring should measure transactional business impact, quantifying the direct impact of brand health on business revenues.

FIVE. Make it fully operational. After aligning with your C-Suite stakeholders on what to monitor and measure, agree on the format (dashboard, report, presentation), delivery and frequency so that incorporating monitoring insights into decision-making is a consistent practice, rather than an ad hoc task.

SIX. Refine brand monitoring to support dynamic business goals. Successful brand monitoring depends on refining the topics, keywords and chan­nels you monitor. Work closely to ensure that brand monitoring collects the data needed to support your changing business goals. Once data is mined, present the results in a format that offers actionable insights.

Results

A company’s brand has real business value. Indeed, the percentage of a business’s value attributed to its brand can range from 10% to 60% or more.2 Carefully monitoring the brand enables each key stakeholder in a company to make short- and long-term strategic decisions that maximize brand value—and business results.

Small businesses need a big purpose, too

This morning, taking my annual May Pilgrimage* to one of my favorite shops, the Grafton Country Store, I was again overcome with pleasure for the success of this small business.

Each time I walk into the shop, I viscerally feel its success. I am always cheerfully greeted by the store owner, we chat it up – leaving me always impressed with her grasp on the business. It’s so refreshing. She bought the business and is now in her third year of revitalizing a once sloppy and uninspired brick & mortar “brand.”  

She is obviously executing to plan. She is creating their brand.

^{_{*May Pilgrimage = 1.) Wedding Anniversary, 2.) Mother in-law's birthday, 3.) Wife's birthday, 4.) 5.) 6.) Mother's Day, 7.) My Mom's birthday. (Grafton, MA.)}}

Every business must have a clear purpose, no matter their size. 

There’s a snobbery in thinking that purpose, mission and vision statements belong to the realm of senior managers in big organizations.  

Of course, large organizations have a larger challenge of communicating a clear focus and purpose - to their swarms of employees - in a manner that creates a consistent company culture where everyone pulls in the same, defined direction. However, that’s only about the scale of the team, not the actual vison. Small business owners need to think about vision, at par, with big business.

The benefits of having a purpose for your business 

What is the purpose of your business? What did you set out to achieve at the beginning? For me, purpose comes down to finding the right balance between two forces:

• What you want to do for your customers and clients.
• What you want to do for yourself. 

Your mission and vision help to bring those two forces into alignment.

You want to give your customers great value for money but you also want to charge a high enough price to give you a big profit. (You also want to differentiate your business.)

How to create a purpose for your business 

First, you need to agree on your purpose in terms of customers and your business. Also, you need to consider it that is sufficient. It is for most small business owners, however, your purpose may need to include influencers including other stakeholders i.e. employees, investors or the community environment.

The purpose statement for your small business defines your company's core goals and purpose. The statement also forms the basis for your small business's brand and the promises your company intends to make to consumers.

A purpose statement is not a vision statement – which states says what the organization wishes to be like in some years’ time. It’s usually drawn up by senior management, in an effort to take the thinking beyond day-to-day activity in a clear, memorable way.  A purpose statement isn't as broad as a mission statement, which seeks to incorporate business strategies and procedures into the document as well as describe what business the organization is in (and what it isn’t) both now and projecting into the future. Its aim is to provide concentration for management and staff.

Instead, a purpose statement focuses primarily on the short message that will guide your company in formulating its business practices and procedures, without spelling out what those methods will look like when your business opens its doors.

 Don’t be vague 

Just because your small business's statement of purpose doesn't include your company's plans for business operations, doesn't mean you should be vague in crafting its language. Create a concise, sharp sentence that captures your purpose statement. Make sure that it is meaningful and specific.

It’s not… “Our purpose is to have many happy customers and for the owners to become rich.” That is meaningless and gives little or no direction.

The statement of purpose should describe the way in which your small business wants to become successful while carving out a place in the local business community. Focusing the statement with specific language can help your management team come up with strategies and methods to accomplish the goals your statement of purpose sets.

• What do we do?
• For whom do we do it?
• Why do we serve our clients in the way that we do?
• Why are we in this industry?
• Why did we start this business?
• What image of our business do we want to convey?

If you haven’t taken the time to sit down and figure out your business’ why statement, I highly recommend that you do so.  Having a clear purpose and focus for everything your business does is key making the shift from business to brand.  From how you speak to customers, to the connection your employees feel within the organization, to the decisions that are made along the way, an engaging purpose statement will bring it all together and insure your business’ success.

If you’re crafting a purpose statement, my advice is this: To inspire your staff to do good work for you, find a way to express the organization’s impact on the lives of customers, clients, students, patients — whomever you’re trying to serve. Make them all feel part of the success.

The operation (M&A) was a success, but the patient (brand) died.

I have lived through both sides of mergers and acquisitions, and from a marketing perspective, it’s both exciting and risk fraught at the same time.

In 2017, according to Thomson Reuters, deal-making hit $3.6 trillion - a record number of deals. And for 2018, Deloitte reports an accelerations of M&A activity is underway.

Yet, with all that energy, even the most reputable and profitable companies have their mettle tested during M&A. Year in and year out, KPMG research reports that shareholder value drops or remains flat for almost 70% of the deals signed. Think about that. Hours and hours of time, vast resources on finances, operations and logistics… for a flat result. Was marketing and brand adeptly worked into the models?  

The “deal makers” have sucked all the air out of the room to close the deal: calculating the marketing impact on the remaining brand is either neglected or placed low on the to-do-list. That’s more a reality than a critism.

Understanding the value of brand within monumental change is hard. Yet successful deals show it can be done. Whether a company is facing its first merger or final acquisition, the resulting organization will benefit as a brand and a business from upfront thinking and brand planning.

Brand strategies can clarify the business intent behind a deal, protect that intent throughout the process, and release new brand potential after the ink dries.

Asking questions in these six areas will protect and enhance brand value.

• Brand and the Bottom Line. In the event of a deal, find data to back up decisions on brand elements to carry forward. Working with facts vs. long-held beliefs is always better. Knowing how much a brand contributes to the bottom line helps determine—and justify—many things, including whether logos are removed, names are changed or products are retired.
• Strategy and Architecture. Times of change present opportunities to tell a fresh story and clean up portfolio overlaps that occur because of a deal. A brand’s experience will guide how much change is needed. CMOs who take defensive postures for fear of disrupting the status quo may miss opportunities.
• Names help companies tell a new story. Often, merging companies keep the name of the stronger brand. Other times, a new name conveys transformation.
• Visual Identity. Graphic changes reflect new vision, purpose and promise.
• Brand Experience. Create consistent experiences across all channels. Deliver clear, simple and relevant messaging for each audience. Customers are not investors, and vice versa. Some companies deploy acquisitions to help drive growth—uniting subsidiary brands under an overarching brand experience.
• Engagement and Activation.Employees champion brands and can be the most important audience during a merger or other deal. However, an estimated 20% of employees voluntarily leave companies soon after merger announcements. Losing valuable talent at vulnerable times endangers your ability to deliver on new as well as old strategies. To reduce unwanted talent losses, help employees embrace new visions and keep them engaged post-deal. 

Never Too Late

When corporations go through a major corporate merger or acquisition , CMOs must speak loudly about protecting and enhancing brand value. And they must speak early in the process.

A brand (new or combined) communicates the value of the enhanced company and serves as a focal point to simplify, amplify and transform. Companies cannot move forward without knowing where they are going. Brand helps companies get there with focus.

Branding and the importance of Mickey’s head

Every four years, while watching the winter Olympics’ skating, I am reminded of my first major client AND of the importance of a maniacal dedication to brand. 

I was working with Disney, specifically PR and advertising for “Disney on Ice.” One of the (wonderful) promotional events was bringing characters around to children’s hospitals. There were two unbreakable brand guidelines:

1. Only the human characters are allowed to speak i.e. Snow White, Peter Pan.
2. No one except another Disney employee is allowed see an Official Character mid-costume. Zero exceptions. Period. This is Disney scripture.

Being more of an advertising man, up until this point, I had not thought much about brand theory. Fortunately, the Disney people gave me the best (free) education a merry marketeer could want.

The theory, and the subsequent practical application, of brand that Disney instilled in me was concise – and I still follow it today across the variety of companies and products I have branded. An effective brand personality (voice) is not a “character” contrived to attract, but rather, it is your brand’s true internal character revealed. A brand cannot be a mask facing a customer, telling them what the brand is. Brand must be a reflection back from the customer. And in our hyper-connected social media environment, your brand is actually what one customer tells another.

So, in THIS case, the brand isn’t Mickey. It’s the delivery of magic that people feel from Mickey. Seeing half-a-mouse would forever diminish that.

Most B2B companies don’t have to concern themselves with delivering magic. These brands have to deliver trust.

Some days, magic may be easier.

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SIDEBAR: My personal brand is between gigs. DM if you’d like to talk and visit www.iBradley.com  

Don’t let your brand ego damage sales: the Kellogg’s and Kashi example.

The ONLY place Kashi acknowledges they are a Kellogg’s property is in the investor relations materials – never on the cereal boxes.

Kudos to Kellogg’s for recognizing that their shareholders like the Kellogg’s/Kashi financial brand story – but the healthy earthy crunchy folks who EAT Kashi cereal (and associate Kellogg’s brand with sicky-sweet-unhealthy cereal) do not. This was a very savvy and brand-humble decision by Kellogg’s marketing.

 

Not every “product” you may own fits under your brand, especially if you are active in M&A.  Some can be assimilated overtime, but be wary if the house brand it so concrete in a wrong direction.

 

Typos are not fatal to your brand. Unless you are in makreting.

Sorry if you are reading this guys, but you spammed a LinkedIn Group. No one is marketing is going to believe these folks know what they are doing. 

 

2005? Update it gents. This says "old content."

Don’t abuse your personal brand and place fans at financial risk.

Subjectively, I am not a fan of Glenn Beck at all – to be clear. Objectively, I think this (image below) sponsorship is an egregious use of “celebrity” to pump a product. Will he take responsibility for the product’s promise – or lack of performance?

How much financial risk should you ask from your fans? Pimping someone’s financial future (INVESTMENT) is very different than buying a $15.00 bottle of perfume from a pop star brand or booking a cheap hotel with Captain Kirk. The “personal brand” needs to be credible to the product / service.

 

He’s turned into Ed McMahon.

Meet promises to build a good brand.

Exceed expectations to build a great business. 

Even in the (web) world of mega-pixels and 2,056 color palette, design your logo to the lowest common denominator.

How will your visual brand look in a single color, small on a pen?

 

Also, plan ahead to alter your logo for strange ratios. This is especially true for sponsorship logo requirements.

Your brand will open the door, not close the sale.

Crisp business-to-business brand building is essential for a key reason: it will save the sales people valuable time on the phone with a prospect. They won’t need spend time telling your “company story,” just right into the “product story.”

Sales people only have a very limited time with a prospect.

 

Bring your own badge holders to trade shows - only wear YOUR brand.

Go to Staples and buy some empty badge holders and perhaps plain lanyards too. Small detail with HUGE visual difference. You're spending THOUSANDS of dollars on you brand presence. Why wear another company's brand? 

 

What brand do you want people to see? 

 

If you're spending time, money and effort on an outreach campaign, use it on your site visually in an obvious manner.

Oh for pete’s sake, no one clicks on a "see our current ad" link.

For real cross-media message reinforcement (which you want...) integrate the visuals, even subtly. Continuity demonstrates an organized thought process which is a good B2B brand.

 

This campaign series I launched is still running. The clever web developer made the faces randomize on each visit.

Don't just put a "logo brand" in your email signature. Put in a real message.

Client support people communicate to your current clients hundreds of times a day. Use that space for upsell, upcoming events, cross-product promotion, etc. Have the image feed in dynamically and you can easily chang it out without bothering the client-facing folks.

 

Note: keep the message light and informative. Soft-sell. The receipients KNOW you already. Keeping the message fresh makes the cleint-facing folks feel like they are delivering content, not just an ad.