What did you just think of and see in your mind?

    Even as I type it I see motocross, I see extreme skiing, airplanes doing crazy things, if I were hooked up to a monitor I bet my heart rate likely even increased slightly.

    Isn't it crazy that two words, a company name that's really unrelated to extreme sports descriptions, can trigger vivid imagery of extreme action sports and even elicit a physiological response just by saying them?

    This is the power of a brand.

    For big brands like Red Bull what this does is allow them to stretch their media impressions further. Meaning when Red Bull shows you an image on Facebook for example, it can be a direct statement to buy their product, and the reality is you might.

    Unfortunately this doesn't work for you and I, yet I see a lot of entrepreneurs in all industry using images and ads that show their logo, an image and an offer.

    Your ads and campaigns even look nice, if you're lucky the imagery maybe even made someone feel something, unfortunately they also created disconnected questions rather than answers.

    Let me explain. You see when you read Red Bull the same consistent imagery comes to mind, the same feelings, ideas, in short you get who they are and what they stand for, you also can likely make a decision whether you like them or don't like them, even without reading a single word of ad copy. The only thing left for them is to give you an offer and ask you to buy.

    You and I, we gotta start from scratch, every single time.

    I think in Supersize me Morgan Spurlock explained that a child will see something like 15,000 (I think it was even more) advertisements for fast food/processed food in a year. Yet, if mom and dad sits with the same child at every meal three times/day for a whole year; by comparison they will only talk to their child about food healthy food roughly 1,000 times.

    How much more powerful is the first message that is delivered an average of fifteen times more than the second message?

    The point is without massive repetition and consistent indoctrination of who you are and what you're about, every single time a prospect sees your stuff it's like meeting a stranger in a crowd. Why does conversation start sometimes? Something of interest, an awkward moment, in other words a shared moment of emotion or interest, which then propels the conversation to the next line or question.

    If you want to market effectively as a fitness professional or small company entrepreneur each line or step of your campaigns have one purpose, get them to move to the next line. Your copy, video, or media asset has a collective objective of gaining enough trust to get the prospect to say yes to the offer at the bottom.

    Given that my post secondary education is in marketing I can honestly say I wish they'd have taught these concepts in college as it's related to the life cycle of your business. Whether you are a single location or a few hundred locations like Fit Body Boot Camp the process of marketing is the facilitation of the relationship; recognize that. Also recognize that for the time being, each marketing piece must start and develop the relationship from scratch to the point of where trust exists before you present the offer.

    Do this and you will not only see an immediately greater return on investment you will be on your way to identifying and developing your developing brand image so that the time needed to develop that relationship may one day be as fast as Red Bull!