Successful Blog

How to Stand Out as a Brand When You’re a Young Company

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By Rachel Fowler

A Princeton survey reported at SmallBusiness showed that not less than 67% of Americans favor small business.

With this in mind, I decided to try my best in small business in America right after graduation. It has been a long journey with lots of painful mistakes. So to save you time, I decided to give you some of my personal tips on how to stand out as a brand.

Make it clear what your brand is. Merchandising, products and logo are very important but not as important as your brand. It is mostly about the experiences of your customers summed with visual elements and customers’ interactions. Take into account that your PR company, your internet publications, mentions and even your social media should be presented in the exact same tone to get your customers’ trust.

Stand out from the crowd of competitors. Unless you have designed a new source of power that can replace oil and gas, you have to be different in order to stand out from the crowd of competitors. Pinpoint your strong sides that make your brand unique. Don’t forget to include your differentiation in your marketing materials.

Make great products. No one will doubt that the key to being successful among small business companies is to have great products. If your product is lacking quality or service, no PR company will help you. Word of mouth is the best marketing tool and you should use it well. Getting your customers to recommend you to their friends is a big deal, which shouldn’t be underestimated. 

Ensure that your customers know the face behind the product. Most small businesses fail because of the repetitive absence of the owner. Take the “Kitchen Nightmares” television show as a simple example- no restaurant can stay open, if the business is being run by itself. You have to be everywhere and literally know everything that goes on in your company. Your employees will look up to you and if you are not engaged, neither will they be.

Make a recognizable name and logo. It is important to make an effective logo at the beginning. Changing logo and worse the name of the company can be quite costly down the road. It should be recognizable and reflect the nature of your product as much as possible. For example, if you have a dog company, your name should be closely associated and recognizable among your target audience. Take “Woofies” and “Doggone Natural” as examples. Both names reflect the nature of the product and are easily recognized by customers.

Make a value proposition. This shouldn’t be confused with a price. The value means to think what your customers need, instead of thinking what you want from them. Put yourself in their shoes, spend a day with your customer, and see what he/she likes, what are his/her hobbies, day routine, job, budget problems. Only after you understand the needs of your customer you will understand the value of your product.

What are your lessons learned starting out as a young brand/company?

This is a post by Rachel Fowler, a recent graduate from NYU. Right now she works as an independent contributor at http://pumpic.com/

Featured image via Flickr CC: kenda bustami

Do You Have the Right Brand Promotion Mix?

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marketing-words-blackboard-shows-selling-promotion-and-sales-100211117Are you looking to grow your company, gain exposure to the media and market your business to a specific clientele?

If so, you’re going to need to carefully plan exactly how you should go about marketing your business. There is no “one size fits all” method, but rather a mix of strategies that work together to give your business the type of growth it needs.

Popular ways businesses go about marketing include networking with other businesses and individuals in the area, asking for referrals, using free forms of advertising (such as Craigslist), developing an online social media presence, placing ads in the newspaper or print media, creating a mass email or text message list, offering deals and specials, donating to a local charity and more.

There are hundreds of ways to market your business, but the trick is finding a mix that works best for your specific industry.

Get More Social

Social media is quickly rising to the top when it comes to marketing. Not only is it an effective way to advertise for nearly all businesses, regardless of industry, but it’s also a free way to advertise.

To market via social media, you first start out by setting up your business accounts on various social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn and more.

Then, start networking with other business and individuals, post information on your company including any specials or promotions you have going on, interact with customers and start developing a following.

Finding the Right Combinations

While growing your online presence is one of the best ways to market your business, it shouldn’t be the only way. A business that markets well knows that it’s a combination of marketing strategies that are the most effective.

The article “Integrating social media, text and email” suggests that the best social media marketing strategy incorporates text messages and email marketing into their plan. Instead of having three separate plans, it’s best to have them work together to form one larger marketing campaign.

So how do you get all three to work together?

A few ideas include asking customers via email to “like” your Facebook page, getting customers to “opt in” to your text message service by offering a discount on your product or placing a “subscribe to my email” option on all of your social media accounts.

By offering discounts or free products to the customers and making it easy for them to share and follow you, you’ll have a much better chance at growing a following and gaining customers.

Once you’ve combined your social media marketing strategy with your text and email campaign, you can begin to seek out other ways to advertise.

Its trial-and-error, as some methods will work wonderfully and others will crash and burn. Your strategies will also change over time as new and improved ways of marketing come on to the market.

Be flexible and be willing to try a variety of methods in order to figure out what works best for your business.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Sarah Brooks is a freelance writer living in Charlotte, NC. She writes on a variety of topics including social media, small businesses and personal finance.

Time to Automate Your Social Media?

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social-media-100183509Social media has been proven to be an effective tool for performing a wide range of business tasks, from marketing to recruiting. As such, businesses around the world are adopting social media at a rapid rate.

If you have already joined the social media fray, you should know that you need to invest a substantial amount of time and effort in order to be successful on social media. One thing you can do to make your social media activities easier and less time-consuming is to use social media automation tools.

Here is a look at three great tools that you can use to automate your social media efforts.

Post Planner

If you want to promote your business and engage with consumers effectively on social media, you have to make a point to share interesting and helpful content regularly.

Post Planner can help you save time and effort by automating the publishing of content on your Facebook page.

This tool enables you to publish content based on a predetermined time schedule; target your content based on details such as age group, gender and education level; look for trending content and add it to your queue; crowd-source content from other people who use Post Planner; access a database with thousands of updates to find new ideas for updating your status; and upload bulk posts.

Additionally, it can perform simple analytics to show you the percentage of users who “liked”, clicked or commented on a certain post.

According to the article, “3 Great Tools to Automate Your Social Media“, Post Planner comes in four different versions, including the free Pro Planner and the paid Guru, Master and Agency plans.

Dlvr.it

When you have new content to share, you want to post it on all your social media channels. However, it can be time-consuming to do this if you have many posts to share on a regular basis.

Dlvr.it is a tool that you can use to deliver content to multiple social media networks.

All you need to do is specify the source and destination of the content. Whenever you create a new post, Dlvr.it will send out your updates automatically.

Currently, this social media automation tool supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Delicious and App.net.

Social Oomph

Evergreen content is content that will not be outdated.

As your social media following grows, you will have fans or followers who have never seen some of your previously posted content. So, when you post content that is evergreen, you should continue to share it in the future.

Social Oomph features a queue reservoir that allows you to add content that you want to re-share to a queue, and you can specify how often the content should be shared.

Also, you can create variations of a post, so that you will not send out identical posts when you re-share content. Social Oomph can also help you find the right people to follow and monitor your social media activities.

Social media automation tools are becoming more advanced and useful.

If you do not have enough time to manage your social media activities, you should try using one of these tools.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of ddpavumba at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: John McMalcolm is a freelance writer who writes on a wide range of subjects, from social media marketing to Cloud computing.

Cook Up More Revenue with Consumer Text Marketing

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couple-enjoying-dinner-at-a-restaurant-100234263If you’re a restaurant, fast-food establishment or local eatery owner, you know that getting customers through the door is a constant focus of your business.

Even when business is good, there are always those quieter times of day when it can be hard to get enough patrons into those seats.

Using mass texts is one way your eatery can draw in more customers, get people excited about your food, and entice them with special offers and exclusive deals.

So just how can you use text marketing to increase your eatery’s revenue? And what are some examples of restaurants that are already doing just that?

Text Marketing Gets Customers’ Attention

As the article “Mass Consumer Texts Driving Up Sales At Restaurants” points out, using text marketing means you can reach a large number of potential customers in your immediate vicinity.

A text message has a personal feel. Unlike an online ad or billboard, a text message arrives directly in front of each customer, inviting them to open and read it, and grabbing their full attention for a few minutes.

Text marketing gives you the chance to start a personal interaction with each customer, putting your restaurant and food at the forefront of their mind, and ensuring they’ll think of you when it’s time to grab lunch or dinner.

Text Marketing Gives Them a Reason to do Business

The beauty of text marketing is that you can use it to entice your customers to eat with you. Text marketing is the perfect vehicle for sending them delicious offers, such as buy one get one free deals, or money off coupons.

If you particularly want to increase revenue at a quieter time of the day or week, you can use text marketing to send out time limited offers for those periods, encouraging people to come and eat with you at that time.

In addition, why not consider sending out weekly specials, daily discount coupons, text-to-win sweepstakes, or even conducting surveys to find out what your customers think of your restaurant, what works and what doesn’t.

Eateries Finding Success with Text Marketing

Several big-name eateries have already seen success with text marketing:

  • McDonald’s used a text-based sweepstakes competition with a wide range of prizes. 1.5 million customers joined in, showing that text marketing can be very effective indeed;
  • Chuck E. Cheese used text message marketing to encourage customers to join their email list – not only did it become the most successful method for getting customers on the list, but customers who joined via text were more likely to open the emails than any other customers;
  • UK pizza place Papa John’s sent out text offers for cut-price pizzas to customers on their text list, and saw a 33% jump in revenue for the duration of the offer;
  • Dunkin’ Donuts asked their customers to join their mobile marketing list, and got a fantastic response, with stores in the Boston area seeing 21% more customers walk through their doors;
  • Taco Bell branched out into using mobile marketing to connect with their customers, offering a free drink to those who opted in to their mobile marketing list. As a result, they garnered 13000 subscribers.

Text marketing is an immediate way to reach many customers quickly and easily, and it’s frequently more cost effective than other forms of direct marketing.

By reaching your customers when they’re out and about you can encourage them to stop off at your establishment and take advantage of your special offers.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Tristan Anwyn writes on a wide variety of topics, including social media, SEO, restaurant businesses and SMS marketing.

How Do We Get More Social in 2015?

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global-social-media-concept-10084871Are you a business owner who is afraid of social media? If the answer is yes, why is that?

When you stop and think about it, there really are no downsides to being socially active when running a company.

Among the advantages of having a steady and solid social presence are:

  • Increased opportunities for sales;
  • Being seen as an expert in your respective industry;
  • Interaction with current and potential customers;
  • Ability to stay up to speed on industry trends and discussions by seeing what others are sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and more.

Must Give 100 Percent

In order to successfully use social media going forward, keep in mind that you can’t give a half-hearted effort to the cause.

When you stop and look at some company’s social sites, do you ever stop and wonder why they do social media in the first place?

Too often you will come across social pages that are sporadically updated, do not share useful information for consumers, and almost never respond to consumer inquiries. Basically, these pages exist just to have a social presence, something that at the end of the day is not all that beneficial for the company or the consumer.

If you’re thinking that 2015 might be the year you and your business fully invest in social media, consider the following:

  • Who is in charge? – First and foremost, who is in charge of your social media outreach? Your two basic options are doing it in-house or outsourcing it. Either way, there needs to be a command structure in place so that there are no communication issues;
  • What are the goals? – It is also important that you set social media goals and stick to them as much as possible. If your main goal is to provide useful info through shares and retweets, follow that plan. If your goal is to interact with consumers, do that. Ideally, you will be doing a little of both and have a well-rounded social media plan;
  • Who speaks for the company? – Lastly, you need to have it understood by all employees of who is allowed to represent the company when it comes to tweets, shares, pins etc. While you may want to encourage your employees that have social accounts to retweet and share stuff, you almost certainly do not want them speaking to customers (current and potential) regarding issues of concern. For example, if a customer sends a nasty message via Facebook or Twitter, you don’t want one of your employees engaging in a conversation that puts a bad light on the business. Have a social plan in writing that details who can speak for the company socially.

As 2015 nears, make it your goal to be the most socially active business going.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of arztsamui at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Miguel Salcido has been a professional search marketing consultant for over 11 years. He is the founder and CEO of Organic Media Group, a content driven SEO agency. He also likes to blog at OrganicSEOConsultant.com and share insights into advanced SEO. 

Why Business Cards Still Matter

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abizcard

If you’re a tech-savvy, online-shopping, social media-sharing internet junkie like much of the rest of the world, you probably wonder why some businesses still rely on business cards.

We live in a time where the world is at our fingertips – literally – thanks to the internet. You can find company information, contact pages, product information and more with just the click of a button.

So, how do business cards still fit in?

Surprisingly, a Small Business Sentiment Survey conducted by Yodle found that roughly 52 percent of small businesses still don’t have a website. And, in North America alone, more than 20 percent of the population does not use the internet, according to Internet World Stats.

Business cards won’t get lost in the shuffle of the world-wide web. They’re concrete, edgy and still very useful.

In fact, a survey conducted by Designcrowd found that 87 percent of Americans exchange business cards when meeting. If you own and operate a small business, that statistic alone should be enough to make you want to develop your own personalized business card.

Why business cards matter

Though having a website and developing company social media pages are important, you still need to have a real-life, tangible business card to help meet your needs.

Keep in mind:

  1. Business cards put a face to a business – When meeting someone new, handing them your business card (preferably with your photo on it) will help keep your business in the back of their minds. Though they may not need your product or services today, there may come a time when they do, and hopefully they will be able to pull out your business card and call versus trying to remember your company name and searching the web.
  2. Business cards visually create your brand – Your business card should stand out among the rest. It showcases you and your company in a visually creative way. Don’t just simply put your name and phone number on the card; instead, add color, a photo or two and your business’ motto. Make it easy for your potential customer to want to use your services.
  3. Without a business card, you look unprofessional – Even if your business is done almost solely online, you still should carry a business card for when you meet new people – whether at the gym or at your child’s birthday party. Local business is always important and by handing out your business card to new people you meet, you’re greatly increasing your chances of growing your business. Plus, if a new friend is genuinely interested in your company and you have no way of providing them with contact information, you may have lost them as your future customer.

If you’d like to get creative, Canva offers a “Free Business Card Maker” so you can easily create your own business cards with a few clicks.

Almost as important as the business card itself is how you carry them.

While stashing a few in your pocket may work, it’s better to be organized with a sleek, high-quality holder.

Retailers such as Walmart offer a variety of business card holders at an affordable price. This Engraved Leather Business Card Case is lightweight, will fit into your suit jacket pocket and is personalized all for $25.

Have your business card handy and always carry at least 5 with you at all times.

As a business owner, marketing your business is not a 9 to 5 job, it’s a 24/7/365 job since you’ll always be on the lookout for new business.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of savit keawtavee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Sarah Brooks is a freelance writer living in Glendale, AZ. She writes on small businesses, personal finances and travel.