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

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:

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In my last post, I discussed how to get the golden touch by producing a DICEE product or service. This advice was at the 2,000-foot level. Now I’d like to take you up 48,000 feet and provide a higher-level view of innovation by discussing the business of ice.

Ice 1.0. Did you know that there used to be an ice harvesting business in New England during the late 1800s and early 1900s? It involved “Bubba” and “Junior” cutting blocks of ice from frozen lakes and ponds. This was no cottage industry—in 1900, people harvested 10,000,000 tons.

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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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Yes, if you have a small business, even a one-person shop, you have a brand. Many small business owners don’t think this way, but when you grasp what a brand really is, I think it may become a clearer.

A brand is little more than the collective perception and association of your business in the minds of your market. So, even if only half a dozen people know your business exists, their thoughts about your business make up your brand.

I like to define small business branding as the act of intentionally becoming more knowable, likable and trustable – in a way, much more aligned with how we might think about a personality.

Let’s face it there are certain traits that make one person a more attractive total package than another – so, I’m wondering, could your business stand a brand (personality) upgrade?

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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.

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