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

(Image credit) Back in the late ’90s, I’d often be asked to give speeches to Very Large Businesses – the kind of companies that bring their top sales execs to a “Chairman’s Circle” retreat at a high-end resort. I’d fly in, eat dinner with the senior management, and in the morning I’d give a talk about the impact of the Internet on that particular business’s industry. And whether I was speaking to an insurance company or a media conglomerate, my message was always the same: The Web is going to change your business, forever, and you better focus on understanding this new technology.

Now, this was ten years ago, mind you. In the intervening decade, large businesses have not only learned the Web, they’ve embraced it. They realize that they live or die by how their brand is expressed online. 

• READ MORE

I feel like i grew up online. My personal brand barely existed without being online in some form… perhaps email and IM were where it all started, moving quickly to free websites, to my own domains, to my own network of sites… my world – my brand – has nearly always been digital! NOTCOT the name itself came about because of a late night rhyming session to make a random email address between high school homework…. notcot@hotbot.com … So i suppose i can’t speak much to the transition from real world to internet….

BUT… this last week i went more offline than i have in years… all while still checking in on my sites and skimming emails about twice a day briefly for a whole week (sad, isn’t it? how that feels like not working at all?)… it’s certainly helped give me more perspective. Knowing this article was in the works made me more conscious of branding i encountered all around me in my day to day! Also being around older family members who were less techy than usual… seeing the ways they look for information and discuss brands was fascinating! (No, they don’t use maps or google on their phones… and many were just starting to try to make sense of their iPhones and looking things up on wikipedia was this slow and new thing that would come up during dinner conversations…)

• READ MORE

I was shocked the other day to read that only 44% of small businesses have a website. This amazing statistic came from a WebVisible / Nielsen Online study released last month (February 2009).

The study also reported that when looking for local (yes, local) products or services, buyers go first to internet search engines.

That means if you don’t have an effective internet presence you are, plain and simple, losing sales.

Here are a few more reasons to take your brand online:

• READ MORE

Large corporate businesses have one advantage over small businesses: they have more people and resources. Because they’re such vast collections of individuals, and it can be difficult for consumers to understand an organization that large,  branding has been developed to control how consumers feel about a company and its products and services.

A brand is a collections of symbols and mental associations connected with a company or product. When defining a company’s brand, marketers seek to develop and align the consumers’ expectations, creating the impression that a product has certain qualities that make it unique or special.

In a small business, your brand doesn’t have to be a collection of symbols because you, the small business entrepreneur, are the brand. What you do and say reflects on all aspects of your business. You humanize your business in a way that corporate brand marketers could only dream about.

• READ MORE

You might think that when you move your business brand online, you’ll lose much of the personal interaction enjoyed at a physical store or office. With a vibrant online community, however, not only will you interact with your customers and client base, but you’ll do so in a manner that’s far more efficient than any face-to-face conversation or phone call. These tips below will help you build and promote your online brand.

1. Lay the foundation. Think of the online arm of your business as the digital version of a physical store. You’d want to keep your storefront neat, clean and organized.

• READ MORE