Listen and share instead?

Strategy is integral, but you need strong branding for any strategy to be effective.

From where we sit, we see companies growing and evolving to accommodate their new ideas and bigger visions. It’s exciting to watch businesses grow in defiance of what the news media hands out on silver platters. It makes dramatic story lines, and we should listen with compassion, but those stories don’t have to shape your reality.

I want to caution you, however, that growth and vision may require basic, often costly changes, that shouldn’t be ignored while you’re building. Even if your new idea is simply a better conception of a previous business, how you brand it will absolutely impact your ability to attract the customers you desire – and the ability to make the money you’re envisioning. 

If you already have a strong brand that represents your offer, your new product or focus may do well with further development of your current branding. Look closely, if your branding no longer represents your vision, it needs to be re-thought. Don’t let the costs associated with new branding impair your judgment.

Don’t Let Cost Become a Noose

If fear of cost prevent or stall you from realizing your new concept as a business venture, I’ve got bad news for you. Nothing about growing a successful business will ever be ‘cheap’ or free. There is quite a bit you can do for yourself to offset your financial investment, but don’t take on the things you haven’t mastered by yourself.

When everything goes exactly as planned, growing your business and growing the operations of your business take bulldog tenacity. If you let yourself get weighted down with things better done by specialists, you’re going to get real tired – real quick. You don’t have time for that. How often do things really ‘go as planned?’ Run your business, get help for the rest.

Attractive Businesses Don’t Shine By Themselves

95% of people don’t know how to make money in business. The people who do, know they need guidance from those who can polish them up so they can shine, as well as support from others. Don’t try to do it all yourself, it’s time-consuming, sloppy, and unwise.

Get mentorship, get wisdom, and make sure your brand reflects what you do for the market you intend to impact with your offer. A well-designed logo, at minimum, is used for brand recognition on a well-designed business website. If you know you have something that requires your buyer to have many shiny nickels, you’d better look like you can perform to their expectations.

You Need to Look at This Seriously

Take a financial inventory and decide on a marketing budget – really dig deep, and recognize where smart money needs to go for brand recognition that brings money back home. The investment you’re making will be evident in your logo and website design, two mandatory requirements for success in business. The third is the ability to think ‘expansively.’ Will you be ready to grow? Not without these basics in place.

Then share your constraints with a marketing agency you can trust for a sensitive conversation. The right agency will know how to allocate your funds in the smartest manner for the largest impact. Without this conversation, you don’t know what you can realistically afford to do, or have a clear idea of what you can expect for your money.

When you work with Zero To Sixty Marketing, we help you make the most of what you can afford, and always showcase your brand at the highest level possible. Our clients are consistently amazed at our performance, and trust us to put their best foot forward.

Zero To Sixty Marketing empowers you to have the business you only dreamed about. You need to perform at your highest level, and we can get you up to speed. Contact us to learn how polished, professional representation will bring higher paying clients to you, and bring them more often.

Have you signed up for the Inside Line yet? Learn what matters, and what to avoid, when you get your copy of 5 Keys to Making Higher Sales in 2012 when you do, available exclusively for our subscribers!

Twitter has a lot to offer the local business, but it’s all about strategy. It took me a couple of years to figure out. Back then, no one really thought about using Twitter in the office interactively. Few are talking about it now.

Let’s say you operate a micro-business, maybe one person in the office and a two to five people off-site visiting clients. By using Twitter tools like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and SocialOomph, you can build a network of local followers that are very likely to need your services.

Why Should Your Company do This?

I believe the beauty in what Twitter offers local business is the mobility. You see it every day, people staring down at their phones to text, search or call. To do that effectively requires a compatible phone. Those phones aren’t cheap. I think that’s a strong argument for segmenting the population right there. First and foremost for most companies is building a client base of customers who can afford their  products or services. Marketing on a mobile platform increases the odds that your message is going out to that base.

Add to that the ability those clients have to tweet to their friends and family about the great company they just hired, and you’ve again increased your company’s validity online. 

How Does a Staff Work Together for Your Company’s Brand?

Large corporations have been doing this for years. They learned early on that when a company has a presence on a powerful network like Twitter, they increase their brand awareness and customer loyalty.

Small companies can learn from this as well. Each member of your company should have a Twitter handle, and a company bio and link back to the website from the profile. They should all have a picture.

With Tweetdeck and Hootsuite tools, each member of the team can be monitored in column view by all or one person. In a micro-sized company like described above, the office staff monitors the column view while the off-site staff simply interacts and comments with their phones between customer visits. All have the ability to retweet a message.

With each of the members developing their own personality and list of followers as they build this network, they begin to approach and follow the others’ lists. Brand recognition ensues, and if managed responsibly, the local market is now exposed to a company where they are already looking when they need a product or service.

This method will work with any size company, from a chain organization to a mom and pop business.

For more insight into building your local business presence online with Twitter, download your free copy of The Very Best Way to Use Twitter for Local Business today.

When I was first contracted to create a logo design for Via-Cell, their idea was a genie, possibly emerging from a lamp, holding coffee, food, and other goodies that can be ordered “via” their “cell-” phone and web-based system. I went to work sketching what I hoped would become the next Chester Cheetah, Tony Tiger or Michelin Man.  

Unfortunately, a lot of the logo design process consists of sketching out what DOESN’T work. In this case, the primary use of the Via-Cell mark would be tiny, used on app button-sized and even smaller icons, including bookmark icons and buttons within their own application.  We had to whittle away the details and – despite my Illustration-loving ways – to arrive at a simple, recognizable Icon that would still embody their brand: a Magic Lamp that brings your wishes with a touch. (Their marketing tag-line at the start was even, “Your Mobile Bazaar.”)

Their web site went online recently, and they hope to expand rapidly beyond their Woodside, CA neighborhood. The system utilizes no special software or dedicated equipment and works entirely through the internet.

A recent article in Website Magazine cautions e-commerce entrepreneurs: “Keep Your Graphic Designer on a Short Leash.” Ouch! It wasn’t a case of reigning in their renegade Artist, it was an experience we shared as we zeroed in on the brand and its end-use. Note that the Via-Cell Site is also designed to communicate the process at a glance, without reliance on text or even English-language proficiency). Point-of-sales pieces for merchant use are being developed with the same quick, visual message.

Stages Of Logo Development

Well, at least Via-Cell has plenty of  ideas ready at hand should they decide to develop a Mascot or “The Animated Series.”  K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple, Scott!

If you’re interested in more articles like the one referenced above, consider signing up for your own copy at Website Magazine, and see what industry professionals are talking about.

No doubt, you’re being bombarded right now by every sales call imaginable, most of them trying to sell you either search engine optimization (SEO) services or advertising space. Since the second week of January, our phone has rung daily with someone selling one or the other.

Since, like most of us, you’re probably considering your next purchase of ad space, let’s focus on advertising today. Yes, it’s a HUGE topic, so we’re going to take it back to its most basic premise: Advertising is Salesmanship.

Let us emphasize the point. The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales. It is not for general effect. It is not to keep your name before the people. It is not primarily to aid your other salesmen.

“Treat it as a salesman. Force it to justify itself. Compare it with other salesman. Figure its cost and result. Accept no excuses which good salesman do not make. Then you will not go far wrong.”
~ Claude Hopkins, Scientific Advertising

This is an especially important point for the small business owner to remember. We can’t afford to waste dollars with advertising campaigns meant to spread awareness of our businesses. Before we consider any advertising campaign, we’d better be reasonably sure that we’re making a good investment, one that will make the cash register ring repeatedly.

Mr. Hopkins goes on to say, “There is one simple way to answer many advertising questions. Ask yourself, ‘Would it help a salesman sell the goods?’ ‘Would it help me sell them if I met a buyer in person?’”

Remember that when a salesperson calls on a prospect, he or she is speaking to one individual. Do the same in your advertising … focus on one typical buyer, not the mass of people you hope will buy your product or service. When composing your ad, speak to the one man or woman who is likely to want what you sell.

Dan Kennedy lists 10 rules for advertising in his book, “No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate, No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-direct Marketing Businesses.” (Don’t you love that title?) I have them taped to the wall directly above my monitor and I refer to them often. I won’t repeat them all here, but I’ll give you a preview:

• Rule 1. There will always be an offer or offers.
• Rule 4. There will be tracking and measurement.
• Rule 5. Whatever brand building occurs will be a happy by-product, not bought.
• Rule 9. Results rule, period.

For Further Reading:

• Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins (free e-book download, provided courtesy of The Copywriter’s Roundtable)
• No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate, No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-direct Marketing Businesses