Small Business Marketing Guide - DIY (do-it-yourself) BRAND MARKETING STRATEGIES to HELP YOU GROW YOUR BUSINESS

Your brand identity should be the basis for all your communication with your current and potential customers. When you have developed a strong brand identity, you will find it is much easier to stand apart from your competitors and win the hearts and minds of your customers.

There are three key areas that you need to think about when you are developing your brand identity. These are:

1. Who are your Competitors?

Every brand has competitors and you want your key customers to buy your brand over theirs. Therefore, when you are developing your brand strategy you need to have a very good understanding of your competitors and their activities.

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Half of all new product revenues come from the introduction and early stages of a product’s life cycle.   But what about brands?  Can you create a whole new life cycle by re-launching your brand online?

Sure you can.  In fact, brand managers have been working overtime on finding the best ways to keep their brands at your fingertips .  Here are some of the best online brand building tools and how you can use them to build a powerful brand presence online. As a small business, you have a lot of the same online marketing tools available to you as the big companies.

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Last week, I shared a few ideas for original and creative marketing materials. Here are some more ideas for high-impact ways to connect with your customers.

Interactive Business Cards
Time: 10 min
Cost: $9.99 for design, $13.98/100 + shipping
Customer Interaction and Playing with Your Business Card: Priceless

After brainstorming, one of my clients came up with the visual analogy of a Rubik’s Cube.

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Marketing materials are NOT what they used to be. Websites have taken a lot of focus and attention away from traditional printed pieces like tri-fold brochures.  But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t create them.  You still need many of the traditional pieces; you just need to give them a new function and purpose.

If your prospect uses the internet to get basic information about your product and your company, your printed materials are now the second stage of helping them decide if your product or service is the right choice for them.  Take them to the next step and have them start interacting with your product.  Your marketing materials need to “pop” and make the recipient think “I cannot live another day without this product or service.”

That is a tall order for most of us.  But not impossible.  Here are the first two ways you can get the “gotta have that” response from your prospects.

Think Before You Print
Time: 40 min
Cost: $0
Clear Differentiated Position: Priceless

Don’t make the mistake of just sitting down and creating business cards, flyers and brochures.  Answer the following questions first. 

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You have spent time and money developing and implementing your direct marketing campaign in the expectation that your targets will be excited and take the action you want.

You wait and wait and nothing happens — no responses, no interest and no sales.

This can be quite typical with direct marketing campaigns and could be because you fell into 3 common traps that should be avoided.

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