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

Vanilla is the most popular type of ice cream in the world. But consumers of vanilla ice cream don’t really care about which brand of vanilla ice cream they are eating.

More importantly, fans of special flavors like Cherry Garcia, by Ben and Jerry’s, would never consider switching to another brand, or back to vanilla. The point is simple – niche targeting and specialized content invoke preference, emotion and commitment to your brand.

So, how do you create a Cherry Garcia brand?

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Upon introduction, it only takes a split second before your customer has created their own impression of your business and what you do. Before you allow that decision to be made, you have to decide what you want that first impression to be.

How you market yourself, as well as the presentation of your materials, will tell the customer everything they need to know about you. However, you must first present that information in a way that will allow them to feel positive about you and what you do.

Dress To Impress

While you can’t impress everyone, you can ‘dress’ your materials to offer the message you want the customer to receive. You wouldn’t walk into an important meeting wearing sweat pants and a t-shirt, would you? Neither should your marketing materials!

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Your product is one among millions.
With so many products, why should a customer choose yours?
Positioning answers this question.

A product’s “position” is the place it occupies in the customer’s mind.
All products have a position—
even if it’s the position of “unfamiliar” or “irrelevant to me” or “not very good”.
Successful products are both relevant and highly ranked.
They stand out. They have a unique position.
The purpose of “positioning” is to create and articulate what makes your product unique.

A key step in positioning is writing a positioning statement.
Let’s start with a template based on the classic positioning structure
used by Procter and Gamble:

Or if you want to be really succinct, use this one by Marty Neumeier:

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When you’re creating your marketing materials, do you struggle to find the right balance between eye-popping promises and reality?  Sure, you can get people to pay attention with claims like:

• Lose 20 lbs in 2 weeks – no dieting.
• Double your income in half the time.

However, there are a couple of problems with making outrageous claims.  You may get people’s attention, but they won’t necessarily believe you.  People will be looking for the fine print of your offer.   They know if it looks too good to be true, it probably is!

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People don’t want to be sold – if they don’t know, like or trust you they can block your messages in a staggering amount of ways.

So, what’s a small business that wants to target a very defined group of prospects to do? I mean, direct mail is still a viable tool for this kind of engagement, isn’t it?

I believe direct mail is a very powerful medium for targeting prospects, but the rules of engagement, just like about everything in marketing have changed.

If you want your mail offers to get noticed they must be more personal than you could ever have imagined something falling in the junk mail category could be.

Think one to one personal.

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