When starting your own business branding isn’t the first thing on your mind. Although it might seem like something trivial at the beginning, establishing your brand ‘voice’ is an essential part of creating a memorable image and building loyalty among your customers. Your brand is how the public will identify your company, so you have to ensure it is as recognizable and memorable as possible.
Branding is difficult because you can’t afford to make any mistakes. One slight misstep might negatively affect your business for years to come. That’s why it is important to establish your brand from the start and continuously work hard at maintaining it.
This being said, I want to talk about 5 of the most common branding errors that small business owners have to deal with.
1. Being a Follower
One of the worst mistakes you can make as a small business is trying to similar to other business around you, whether that be a larger company or a local competitor. Consumers value a company’s individuality, so your company’s public image should be as unique as possible to ensure it doesn’t look like you are trying to copy someone else.
2. Wrong Name
A company’s name is everything. You want to ensure that you customers can easy talk about your business with out the name interrupting the flow of a casual conversation or being difficult to pronounce.
Furthermore, make sure that the name you pick for your business is unique and not easy to confuse with another business or worse, a competitor.
3. Be Committed
Ensure everyone at the company is onboard with the branding strategy for the company. You don’t want your sales team projecting an entirely different brand image then what the company is trying to establish. This means committing to a single brand identity and carefully cultivating it both within the company and with your customers.
4. Hold Yourself Accountable
There is nothing worse to a consumer then a broken promise. Don’t promise something you can’t deliver, the reputation of your company is on the line. Set realistic expectations so that your customers are never disappointed in your business or your brand.
5. Know Who You Want As a Customer
Don’t try to please everyone! Consumers are diverse and change their tastes quickly, so don’t base your brand around a trend that might be gone next week. The image you create for you business should be durable and able to stand the test of time.
Overall, the most important aspect is that you protect your brand. Ensure that every decision is made with your brand image and positioning in mind. Just because you’re a small business doesn’t mean you can leave your brand up to chance.
We know that it might seem trivial to go through this process, but once you are an established business it is much harder to shape who you are and what you are all about. So get it done from the beginning so you have a strong foundation for your business to grow and prosper.
Has this motivated you to get your businesses branding done, but don’t know where to start? We’d love to help you figure it out. Give us a call at (888)482-1313.
As a small business we know you have to be extremely creative with your marketing budget (that’s if you even officially have one!). Most of the time your best bet will be using a “free” source such as one of the many social media networks.
But having the first hand experience of parents who own a local business, I know it’s sometimes difficult (because of both monetary and time constraints) to integrate something new to the your business’ mix. So, I’m going to try to give you a short run down of exactly what social media is and what it can do for your small business.
The Basics
Essentially, social media is a virtual community where people and businesses can go to interact, share and exchanges information. The use of social media has exploded in recent years, and has proven to be a great way to interact with all types of potential customers.
There are a variety of social media networks, each having their own unique uses and audiences. For example, Pinterest is great if you want to provide image-based content geared more towards women (since 70% of users are women). For more information on this and other networks check out our past blog titled “Social Media Network”, explaining each network and its specific uses.
Using social media networks allows you to create pages about your small business and all its offering. Once you set up your pages you are also able to update your followers on a regular basis and help increase in your business’ awareness and exposure. As your followers grow, you will be able to use social media to update them on the latest promotions, trends or products that your business has to offer and drive them in-store and convert them into a long-term customer.
Social media has a lot of potential uses for small businesses, but as with everything it comes with its drawbacks. One of the biggest is the time utilization of being active on a variety of platforms. Over 25% of small businesses, that actively participate in social media, report spending more then 10 hours per week planning, engaging and posting content via social media. But don’t get discouraged by this statistic, the important things is that you get organized and plan ahead to ensure you’re posting engaging content consistently, and with hard work and consistency watch your followers and business grow.
If you ever find that your social media account has become too time consuming, over whelming or are worried that you aren’t using it to your business’ fullest potential we are always here to help! We can help you review, organize, plan and execute any social media plan or campaign you might need across all mediums.
Are you ready to embrace the demands of your mobile customers?
Over two-third of Facebook and Twitter traffic is coming from mobile devices! That’s an astonishing number. Furthermore, according to Google research, 66% of promotion views are via mobile and 67% of customers are more likely to buy from a brand with a good mobile experience.
Those numbers show a significant shift in how customers are behaving, and in what direction businesses need to begin to adapt. Just look at the numbers, if your business does not begin to shift some of their promotions via mobile devices such as a smartphone, tablet and desktop, you can fail to reach approximately 60-70% of social media users. That means if you have or are thinking about integrating social media into your marketing strategy, you seriously need to start thinking mobile.
So now that your customer is mobile, you need to ensure that your promotions, such as sweepstakes, giveaways and contest are optimized for mobile too. Therefore, you need to start considering how your promotions will look and interact with your customer on the mobile device. We want to help you out a bit and have put together a short list of things you should keep in mind when making the shift to mobile.
1. Make your promotions user-friendly.
Keep in mind that the smartphone mobile screen is much smaller and space is much more restricted then a desktop or even a tablet screen. So ensure that you don’t make your customer pinch, or slide their small screen multiple times. Give them a clear look at your promotion from the start, without having to zoom in. The easier it is for them to see it and interact with it, the more likely they are to participate in your promotion.
2. Remove barriers to entry.
Mobile consumers are not going to deal with having to jump through hoops to interact with your business. Don’t make them login in or fill out a long form, just make sure everything is simple, clear and to the point.
3. Simplify participation.
Make sure that the entry form is native for mobile devices so your customers can quickly and easily enter their information. In addition, only ask customers for the information that is absolutely necessary for you to run your promotion.
4. Don’t just shrink it down.
Don’t think that shrinking your desktop version to fit on a mobile device is the solution; most of the time this offers a terrible user experience and 52% of customers say if they have a bad mobile experience they are less likely to interact with that business. In addition, don’t forget to ensure your creative can adapt to all of the various screen sizes for mobile devices.
5. Optimize across all devices.
As mentioned above, ensure your promotion can work across all devices. So ensure your promotion cannot only be seen correctly on the iPhone but on a Samsung Galaxy too.
Not having a mobile strategy is no longer an option. If you wish to succeed long-term, you should seriously begin to embrace the move to mobile if not your customer might just move on to your mobile savvy competitor. The age of mobile is no longer a prediction but a reality, so make sure you aren’t playing catch up.
How much to spend on marketing and advertising is a question all businesses ask at one point or another. How much should you spend, and how much can you truly afford to spend? This is an important question that should be answered and not ignored with hopes that it will go away.
So, in hopes that business owners will take this question seriously, I am here today to talk a little about the most popular ways to figure out how much to spend on marketing.
The Traditional Way
The most traditional way to approach this question is to spend a percentage of your revenue. You can approach this method by looking at what you plan to make in sales this year and then multiply that by a percentage to reach your business’ marketing budget for the upcoming year. On average, business who take this approach allocates anywhere from 8 -12% of their revenue.
So for example, say you estimate your business will bring in $1,000,000 in revenue, and you want to dedicate 8% of your revenue to marketing and advertising. So you would multiply $1,000,000 x 8%, which would give you a budget of $80,000 for the year.
Other things to take into account when determining the percentage of revenue that you should dedicate to marketing and advertising are:
- Your business’ industry
- Competitive landscape
- Competitor’s spend
- Market saturation
- Target audience
This method works because it is an easy and understandable answer, but be careful because it’s not 100% accurate. Small or new businesses need to be especially careful because if you don’t have much revenue, the whole equation can breakdown. Also when calculating this out keep your margins in mind!
Everything You Can Afford
So, we know that often times it’s hard to calculate future sales, especially on the local/small business side. So this is definitely one of the most popular methods for local and small business. Essentially the idea is to set money aside that is necessary to run the business and then invest the rest into marketing to build popularity and awareness.
The overall objective of this method is to help grow your business quickly, and establish yourself in the marketplace. The upside of this method in theory is that it allows for growing your business fast. This aggressive, and risky, method should be well thought out and planned because you are essentially putting all your eggs in one basket.
Just A Bit More Then the Competition
This method is pretty straight forward, find out what the competition is spending than spend just a tad bit more then them.
This method offers a reasonably good way to estimates how much you should be spending in the marketplace (especially if you are new to marketing and advertising). The biggest issue with this method is that it is often hard to find out exactly how much your competitors are spending, so your numbers are not always as accurate as you might like.
Desired Customer Growth
This is a great method if you have a specific number of new customers you want to attract. Essentially the equation for this type of budget planning is: the cost of a new customer multiplied by the amount of new customers you want to acquire, gives you the total amount you need to spend.
This is a great and very accurate way to forecast the amount you will need to spend to reach your objective. Keep in mind though that in order for this method to be successful you need to know exactly how much it cost to acquire a new customer.
Industry Specific
Every industry has projections of how much a business will need to spend to be successful. Seek out these averages and refine them to your market, business and situation.
This method is great because it is very accurate and specific to your type of business. Just be careful because often times this average can include amounts from larger organizations, so it can be overestimated for a small business.
Spend Nothing and Try to Market for Free
Thanks to digital media this is now a doable method. Build your social media networks, or increase your customer database. All these are simple methods that can really help boost your sales.
But remember because it is free, you will more then likely end up spending a lot of time managing all these methods- so in essence it isn’t free.
Objective/Task Oriented
This might be one of the best methods for local and small businesses that are running on very limited resources. This method is more general and revolves around setting objectives, planning tasks required to complete the objectives and then estimating all the costs for the task required.
Overall this method works best if you have very specific objectives and tasks that you want to accomplish. The only set back is that you need to have a solid understanding of what is important and what you need to accomplish.
Overall, trying to project a marketing budget can be very difficult to plan out, especially if you are a small business. What local and small business owners need to keep in mind is that going through the process and making a budget gives you a starting point. From there, you can begin to make decisions about the rest of your marketing strategies and how to move forward.
It seems like social media is EVERYWHERE now. Everyone is using it now, consumers and businesses of all sizes alike. But as a business have you ever stopped to think which social media network is actually working for your business?
The process of using social media can be very time consuming, so you want to make sure you are using the best social network to achieve your goals and objectives. But do you know which social network will help you achieve your goals?
Today I want to offer you some quick insights into the top five social networks, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube. We will be looking at four main factors, customer communication, brand exposure, traffic to your site and SEO value.
Facebook
Everyone is on Facebook, right? Here’s how Facebook can help out your business.
Customer Communication
Facebook offers you an easy and efficient way to talk to your entire demographic. You can create and push content and help manage your business reputation to your current fans. The only downside is if you want to reach non-fans, or 100% of your fan base, you will have to run sponsored posts, which means having to pay for advertising and knowing how to effectively build a successful ad campaign.
Brand Exposure
Because of their huge user base, Facebook is one of the quickest and most cost effective ways to get brand exposure.
Traffic To Your Site
Thanks to that huge user base we talked about earlier, one new fan can lead to 20 new website visitors. These visitors are leads, or potential customers for your business!
SEO Value
As of right now, only shared links from fan pages matter for search engine optimization, but as things progress it is likely that in the future social media network sites like Facebook will play a bigger role in search engine ranking.
Google+
As the #2 social media network, Google+ has become a quiet contender among social media networks.
Customer Communication
As a the second place social media network, Google+ still lacks the reach of Facebook and Twitter. But even though it doesn’t have the same reach, it does facilitate communication with customers.
Brand Exposure
As Google’s social network, Google+ offers excellent brand exposure. Your account will appear in branded search results, which will add credibility and increased exposure.
Traffic To Your Site
Google+ helps to provide your site with new traffic, plus users tend to stay on the site whose links they follow.
SEO Value
Because the Google +1 button allows for users to search both public and private information, this gives Google+ a advantage at providing value for search engine optimization and search engine ranking.
Twitter
Twitter offers businesses a great way to keep your customers informed about your business’ latest news. It’s large user base and real-time element makes it one of the best social media networks a business can use.
Customer Communication
Twitter is one of the best channels for direct communication with your customers. It allows you to have real-time conversations with your customers.
Brand Exposure
Twitter offers an easy, widely used and cost-effective way to gain brand exposure.
Traffic To Your Site
Inserting links and call to actions into your tweets gives Twitter an
unmatched ability to drive traffic directly to your site.
SEO Value
The search engine optimization value on Twitter beneficial for businesses due to the fact that Google gives authority ranks for Twitter profiles.
Pinterest
As one newest social media networks, Pinterest has already established a huge following among women, showing that a picture truly is worth a thousand words.
Customer Communication
Aside from the ability to showcase your new product, Pinerest does not offer the opportunity for business to directly communicate with customers.
Brand Exposure
As visual content continues to grow and dominate social media, this makes Pinterest one of the most powerful tools for brand exposure. Visual content, such as images and video are viewed 70% more then written content. So if your business is visual, Pinterest is the place to be.
Traffic To Your Site
Most pinned images contain links back to a site, which tremendously helps drive traffic to your site. It is currently one of the top three traffic referral sites.
SEO Value
Although Pinterest’s Pins do not allow for links to be tracked by search engines, it can seriously increase your websites traffic and increase your brand awareness. In addition, as mentioned before things constantly get updated and revised so I would not be surprised if Pinterest becomes a huge asset to business search engine optimization in the future.
LinkedIn
One of the best social media networks for B2B brands. LinkedIn offers you a platform to connect and engage with industry professionals.
Customer Communication
LinkedIn offers an opportunity to connect with your customers through groups with specific interests connected to your brand.
Brand Exposure
Because LinkedIn is a professional networking site, it provides impressive exposure to the business world. This allows you to promote your personal and business brand to a variety of professional contacts and organizations.
Traffic To Your Site
One of the biggest drawbacks of using LinkedIn is that it is not a huge referral site. Though you can get a lot of connections, not a lot of them will end up at your site, because of this it is extremely important to properly manage and dedicated resources to increase traffic to your site.
SEO Value
LinkedIn’s profiles are some of the easiest and most frequently SEO-ranked social profiles on the web. So having your business on LinkedIn can help you end up on search engine result pages and strongly benefit your business’ search engine optimization.
YouTube
YouTube is now ranked as the #3 social media network. As visual content continues to grow, YouTube has become the place consumers go to get their video fix.
Customer Communication
Video has become a great way to get your customers involved. It provides unique ways to engage, entertain, and inform your customer. YouTube offers the prefect platform to do all these things.
Brand Exposure
YouTube offers a great way to promote your brand. As a visual medium it offers a great way to continuously keep your customer engaged with your brand and to share your content.
Traffic To Your Site
YouTube offers a great opportunity to drive traffic to your site. Entertain your customer or potential customer with a great video and
they will more than likely want to discover more about who you are as a brand.
SEO Value
Consistently using YouTube can seriously help bump up your search engine optimization. Just remember to integrate keywords, sitemaps, titles and robot text files to help judge relevance.
As you can see, your options for social media networks are diverse, and we only covered the most popular social media networks! When deciding which networks to use always keep in mind what your objectives are and what you hope to accomplish.
Lastly, don’t forget that in order to run successful social media campaigns you must be willing dedicate sufficient time and resources to ensure they are properly managed and maintained.
