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Posts Tagged ‘Branding’
Friday, December 9th, 2011
What is the definition of an online business? Any business, whether it is a physical location or just a website, you need to advertise everywhere you can. Because people are on the go so much these days, they prefer to see a website address that they can jot down and go to the site later, when they have time.
Online advertising is a great way to advertise. But for those who never think of searching for items online, when they see a poster or a business card with a website address, they will be more likely to go to the website when they are relaxing at home.
The traditional ways of advertising can be increased by adding your website to the ad, whether it is newspaper, radio or television. You could conceivably pull customers in from everywhere.
Be sure to also include your email address so customers can email you with any questions they have. You can also do an email marketing campaign. If you regularly stay in contact with your customers, you will be able to bring your online business and you physical business together.
One of the best ways of advertising off line is to take a walk around your local town. Meet and greet people, hand them a business card, let them know what your business is all about. Mention the website and email address. You would be surprised at how well this works, even in today’s technology.
Tags: advertising, Branding, e-mail marketing, internet marketing, small business, website
Posted in Tools for Small Business | 14 Comments »
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
In the business world, advertising is everything when it comes to keeping a business going. Especially small businesses. Yes, large corporate companies advertise all the time and spend large amounts of money to do so. A lot of people can’t do that when running a small business on a budget.
That does not mean you should ignore advertising altogether. Far from it. A small business has to get their name out there in order to thrive against the large corporations. One way to do that is online. Advancing technology is where advertising lies right now. So what do you do? The following tips will help you get more exposure. Which in turn, will bring in more business and will not cost you an arm and two legs.
- Start a free blog about your business. You don’t have to have an expert copywriter do this (although, you can – wink wink). WordPress, Blogspot and other free blogging platforms offer step-by-step tutorials for setting up your business on a blog. You can then write something regularly about your business. You can post your blog to several websites that will send your blog to many areas of the internet. You will have people reading about your business from half a world away.
- Start a fan page on Facebook. Almost everyone is on Facebook today, or Twitter, or LinkedIn. This is a great way to meet people, talk about your business and get the ball rolling. Once again, post something every day about your business. It will bring customers to the door.
- Craigslist is another freebie you can use to advertise your business. The advertising can be put in different time slots so you have a new ad running virtually all the time. Someone, somewhere is bound to see it.
- Use Google Local to list your business. You can put the pertinent information such as phone number, address and any products you sell. Then when someone wants to search for what you are selling such as flowers in Anytown, USA, your business will pop up in the search results for that particular area. People are using this type of search instead of the traditional yellow pages books.
This is just a small sample of what you can do online to promote your business. Why not take the plunge and reap the rewards of online advertising for your small business.
Tags: advertising, blogging, Branding, facebook, google, internet marketing, online marketing, Social Media, Twitter
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 11 Comments »
Friday, November 25th, 2011
Some search engine optimizers are stuck on keywords and links. If you listen to them talk, these are the Holy Grail of online marketing. But are they?
Don’t get me wrong. SEO is important. I mean, how will you rank in the search engines for the key terms you want to be known for if you don’t employ sound SEO strategies? But you should also understand that there are some things about SEO that you can’t control. The search algorithms, for instance.
It’s important to study what you can about SEO tactics and perform your best practices. But don’t hang your hat on them. They can change at any time.
Branding, however, is something you have 100% control over. It’s your image. You control what images, taglines, and statements are associated with your brand. No one else can control that for you. So if you focus your time and energy on building your brand with some thoughts how to employ SEO and a social media strategy effectively, then you’ll fare better in the long run.
What I’m really saying is this: Build your brand first. Market it secondly. SEO and social media are the nuts and bolts of online marketing. Without a brand, they’re just nuts and bolts.
Tags: Branding, online marketing, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Branding | 6 Comments »
Thursday, November 17th, 2011
There comes a time in every business’s life when it will be prudent to re-brand the business. How do you know when that time is?
There might be several reasons why you’d re-brand a business. If the current branding is hindering you more than helping you, then that’s an obvious situation that requires paying attention to. For instance, lawsuits that have drawn negative publicity and have hurt your brand could spell an end to your brand and require a re-branding effort. Many large businesses have done just that. But that’s not the only reason to re-brand.
Sometimes you can re-brand a business just for the sake of improving the customer experience.
Recently, Small Business Mavericks underwent a re-branding effort. We streamlined the website and simplified our navigation to make it easier for you to find information on the website. We hope you like it!
Another reason you might re-brand yourself is your mission has changed. If the company changes direction and your service offerings change along with it, then you might find that your old branded look just doesn’t cut the mustard any more. You might find it necessary to re-brand in order to communicate your new mission and new values more effectively.
Re-branding is not always a bad thing. If you do it right, it can be very positive.
Tags: Branding, business, re-branding
Posted in Branding | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
What is the beginning of Internet marketing for your small business? If you thought I was going to say your website, sorry to disappoint you. Effective Internet marketing begins long before you start building your website.
Internet marketing begins with research. There are three really important areas of key research that you should undertake before you do anything online.
- Keyword Research – Not necessarily first, but definitely not least. You should research important keywords for your business so that you can determine your search engine marketing needs and strategy.
- Competitive Research - Who is your competition? What are they doing and what have they done? Are you subscribed to their newsletters and blogs? You should be.
- Brand Research – Brand research is a little bit more complicated. It goes beyond basic competitive and keyword research. You must also look at other forces that can affect your marketing online. Who are the customer that need what you have to offer? Where do they hang out online, what social media hotspots are important to them? What are their questions? How are you going to answer them and meet their other needs as a brand?
Before you start marketing online, do some level of research. What is the market for your product or service? Who is doing it now? What holes are they leaving unfilled? If you’re going to build a brand online, then you need to make sure the most important questions don’t go unanswered.
Tags: Branding, competitive research, internet marketing, keyword research, research
Posted in Branding | 5 Comments »
Monday, August 8th, 2011
As marketers, we like to talk about how you can brand yourself wherever you go. You can brand yourself on Google and Bing. You can brand yourself on billboards. You can brand yourself at the local Chamber of Commerce. You can brand yourself on Twitter. You can brand yourself with articles and through your blog. But can you brand yourself through Facebook?
Can you brand your company through Facebook?
Keep in mind that you and your company – even if it is a sole proprietorship – are two different things. Your company might have a page, but does it have a profile on Facebook? You certainly have a profile, but do you need a page?
These are questions you’ll have to ask yourself when attempting to use Facebook for branding. But let’s talk first about your wall. Let’s say you have a profile, but your business does not. Should you post repeated status updates about your business on your wall?
I wouldn’t encourage that. What I would encourage you to do is to use Facebook as a lifestream. Don’t tell everything about yourself. It isn’t therapy. But do let your fans and friends know who you are. Post about your hobbies and interests, news stories you read, talk about your children and grandchildren, and, yes, talk about your business.
Your business is a part of you. It’s not all of you. It’s only a part of who you are. Facebook is a place where you can be who you are. By branding yourself completely as an individual, you can gain some business from the tool. Use Facebook as a tool, not weapon.
Tags: Branding, facebook, marketing
Posted in Social Media | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
For years, large companies like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and ExxonMobil have spent millions of dollars simply to maintain a positive impression in the media. They weren’t so much concerned with the coveted ROI on advertising campaigns as they were with branding themselves and achieving top-of-mind awareness.
When you establish a new advertising campaign – whether it be through pay-per-click services, outdoor advertising, print media, or any other medium – you should outline your goals. Are you looking for ROI or would you be happy with branding effects?
If ROI is your main concern, then you have to think about your budget. Being the top spender in your market segment may mean that you lose money on your advertising. But it could mean that you achieve huge branding success. Which is more important to you?
PPC is like any other advertising medium. You can figure out which price point per click will yield the greatest ROI on your advertising efforts or you can try to own the advertising space with a PPC branding campaign. If you opt for the latter, be prepared to pay top dollar for clicks. Sometimes, your customers come from other places on the Web because they noticed your PPC ads when they conducted a search.
PPC for branding isn’t for the faint of heart. You must ensure you have the budget for it or you may as well go home.
Tags: advertising, Branding, Pay Per Click, PPC, roi
Posted in PPC for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Friday, July 15th, 2011
Some people call it “integrative marketing.” I think that’s a good phrase, but regardless of what you call it, small businesses struggling in a down economy should spend a little time thinking about how they market themselves. Cutting marketing out of your budget altogether shouldn’t be an option, but you have to pay attention to where your dollars are going.
Online marketing has traditionally been less expensive than offline marketing, and in many ways it is. But if it doesn’t produce any results, it could be more expensive.
That’s why you should look carefully at where every marketing dollar is going and one way to do that is to sync up your online and offline marketing efforts. What does that mean? It means that your message across all marketing channels should be consistent. You might target different segments of your market through each channel, but your message ought to be same.
For instance, if you sell yellow widgets at discount prices, then try to keep the focus of your online and offline marketing collateral on selling the benefits of your proposition. Don’t focus on yellow widgets in one medium and discount prices on another. Rather, focus on the best benefits in every medium through which you advertise.
Marketing is basically the same in the 21st century, with a little bit of a twist. Consumers are tired of being interrupted. They want to feel like they have more control over what they see. So pull them in, don’t push.
Tags: Branding, offline marketing, online marketing
Posted in Traditional Marketing for Small Business | 4 Comments »
Thursday, July 7th, 2011
Mashable is reporting that Google is planning to rebrand two of its largest Web products – Picasa and Blogger. The rebranding supposedly is taking place in concert with the public launch of Google +. Here’s my question: Why?
I understand rebranding Picasa. It’s new name will be Google Photos. When I think of Picasa, I think of Picasso – the famous painter. But Picasa is about photos, not paintings.
I don’t know if that’s what the creators of Picasa had in mind when they built the photo sharing site, but that’s what I think about. So I can understand changing the name of Picasa to Google Photos. But what about Blogger?
The proposed new name of Blogger is Google Blogs. I’m not sure I like that. But the real overriding question is whether or not the services will change, and it appears that they won’t. So if Blogger isn’t going to change in nature, will changing the name to Google Blogs make much of a difference among those who use it? I’d say probably not.
When it comes to branding, merely changing the name of a subsidiary service won’t make it a better service. In case of Picasa and Blogger, they’re popular and good services as they are.
Tags: blogger, Branding, google, Picasa, rebranding
Posted in Branding | 4 Comments »
Friday, July 1st, 2011
When it comes to blogging, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. There are as many ways to do it as there are companies with a message to send. The key is to find the method that works for you. With that in mind, here are 4 viable blog strategies that work. All you have to do is give them a go.
- SEO Blogging – With SEO blogging, the idea is to produce content that gains search engine traction. This type of blogging has a bad name in some circles. They call it splogging (spam blogging), but it works. You set up a domain name with your primary keyword in it and target that keyword plus several more that are related. You can put your SEO blog on the back end of a domain that you want to increase traffic for or put it on a separate domain and use it to build links. Either way, the main target is search engines.
- Social Blogging – If SEO blogging is a low-level form of blogging, social blogging is a step up. Your main aim is to increase your community’s size. You try to spark lively debate in the comments section of your blog and promote your blog through as many social media channels as you can. This may include but is not limited to BlogCatalog, Facebook, Twitter, niche social sites, and a myriad of social bookmarking communities. You’ll also want to reach out to other bloggers within your niche and establish a dialogue with them as well.
- Branded Blogging – Branded blogging is corporate, or commercial, blogging at its finest. You are not so much concerned with SEO or social media as you are with building your brand. However, you do use SEO and social media to help you reach your branding goals.
- Hybrid Blogging – Hybrid blogging takes one or more of the aforementioned strategies and merges them. It is the best, and the highest level, type of blogging there is. It also has the potential to be the most effective blog marketing around.
Tags: blog marketing, blogging, Branding, commercial blogging, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 4 Comments »
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