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

A blog can be a great tool for marketing your business and establishing yourself as an expert in your field. However, like anything you do to promote your business, it is important to make sure your blog is consistent with the brand you’ve built for your small business.

Here are some tips to keep in mind if you’ve decided to start a blog for your business:

1. Your domain is part of your brand: There are a lot of free blog-hosting options out there, such as Typepad, WordPress.com and Blogger. However, they tack their name on to your web address in exchange for the free hosting. So if you are Janey Smith, CPA and start a Blogger blog, your blog address becomes “janeysmithcpa.blogspot.com.” For just a few dollars a year, you can own your own domain — one that rolls off the tongue, sticks in the customer’s mind and looks great printed on a business card. Choose a domain you would still want when you have a loyal following and are interviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

• READ MORE

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. 

• READ MORE

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?

• 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

All companies and products have names.
But not all names are good. And few are great.

Well-chosen names benefit the customer.
They stand out, are easy to remember,
and differentiate from the competitors.

Bad names blend in, are forgettable,
and create ambiguity about the benefit
of your company or product.

How do you find a good name?
Here’s a process to get you started:

• READ MORE