Branding is an imperative in business today if you intend to make your company stand out from the crowd. Many businesses (large or entrepreneurial) take this to mean a slick logo or a graphically pleasing website. These promotional/branding mechanisms are important and should be considered, however, one of my personal favorite means of branding a business and its offerings (primarily applicable for business-to-business organizations serving other businesses) is to leverage the PowerPoint medium. The ability it affords for you to develop and display graphical models/images that speak volumes about your business and the value your products and services provide, make…

OK, a bit rude of me to ask, but well, are you? Or more to the point “do you”? More and more often I hear and see companies, especially in their early days NOT doing a SWOT analysis on their marketing spend when in reality this is exactly the time they should be doing one. With little extra money in the pot, every penny being spent should be analyised and accounted for and if it’s not working then it should be cut from the budget – immediately. (After all why throw good money after bad?) So what does a good…

Your Personal Brand and your Corporate Brand have a lot in common. The number one thing of course is that they are both the result of your personal efforts and vision. Many times a progressive and exciting company has at it’s helm a leader who inspires those around them and generally have a very positive outlook on life. The Personal Brand of these folks reflect these fine attributes. I thought it might be a great exercise to take a look at your Personal Brand elements as defined by Corporate Brands elements. Company Name: Joe Brand Logo: Your Signature Your signature…

Ask anyone in business what their plans are for the upcoming year? Chances are good that most will say, “I’m planning on taking my business to the next level”. What does that mean exactly? What measures have they taken, to achieve this goal? First off, they would have to establish exactly what the “next level” means. All of these questions need answers. Taking their company to the next level, regardless of what is meant by the term involves careful planning. I have found that every one in business LOVES to plan. They love to visualize – to dream of just…

Let’s face it. We already know that you are not going to get everything done, in terms of marketing that you should or you want to. I know…hardly a jolly way to approach the start of a new year. But that’s our reality. We’ll never get to it all. So rather than lament about what we aren’t going to get to…let’s focus on what absolutely needs to be done. By the end of THIS week, identify the one thing you could do that would have the most significant long-term impact on your business in 2008. Is it finally defining and…

It’s funny how clearly you see in an emergency. Monday morning, after about four weeks of ear infections, our one year old son was vomiting and had a nasty bout of diarrhea. All of you parents know this can spell trouble for a little kid. We were worried enough to take him to the doctor, who promptly told us that either the antibiotics or a stomach bug had caused him to become dehydrated and that he was sending us to the hospital straight away. Any time you check into a hospital they run a barrage of tests, they put in…

1) Lead found in the toys manufactured in far east plant. This has been quite a challenging year for his Chinese elves. How they correct this issue will speak volumes to brand values. 2) Are they Santa’s elves or Santa’s little people? For a time, contact with political correctness almost side-lined our industrious little friends. But the cache associated with their centuries of tireless service to children won out over the PC zealots. 3) Remember the annoying complainers worrying about the safety of the reindeers having to land on slippery snowy rooftops in the wee hours of the morning? If…

Direct mail may be a familiar option for most small business professionals. Only a fraction of them, however, leverage this medium to its full potential. The flexibility of its usage, as well the ability to measure results, make direct mail an attractive marketing tool. Perhaps you are trying to raise awareness about your products or services, or you are looking to generate new customer leads, or maybe you are simply reinforcing your message to existing customers. Direct mail campaigns can serve a myriad of strategic objectives. Here are a few suggestions to consider before your next direct marketing campaign: Begin…

When you’re a solo entrepreneur or a small-business marketer, you can’t afford to blanket the airwaves with advertising, casting a huge net with the hopes of landing some fish. Your outreach to potential customers has to be count. It has to be focused, well-targeted, and efficient. Therefore, when determining your target audience, you should ask yourself a sequence of simple questions: 1. Who needs my product/service? 2. Who knows they need my product/service? 3. Who knows their need and can afford to purchase it? 4. Who, in that last group, can I actually reach? That is your target audience. Everyone…