In the world of internet marketing branding plays a very critical role in an overall marketing strategy. Branding tactics, designed to increase familiarity, ultimately result in front of mind awareness, trust, and purchases. To leave it out of a business marketing equation is to risk future success and sustainability. The good news is, becoming a familiar brand doesn’t mean spending millions of dollars on a Super Bowl ad. Becoming a familiar brand simply requires patience and a strategy that encompasses a variety of marketing tools designed to increase brand recognition. Recognition means you’ve established front of mind awareness. When people…

Among psychological triggers, ‘Credibility’ offers a significant contribution to your prospect’s buying decisions. We buy from people and companies who we perceive to be experts in the industry. We buy from people with a longstanding track record of success and we buy from companies who offer the power of mass appeal – mass appeal gives the perception of credibility. If thousands of people are buying XYZ then they must be good, right? So if you’re a brand new company with a handful of customers how do you establish credibility? First and foremost – offer an exceptional customer experience. Word of…

Building a brand is a process. It isn’t something that happens overnight and it certainly takes more than a logo and a business card. Many super sized businesses like Nike, Honda, and Ikea and so on spend tremendous amounts of time and money creating their brand. Small business owners just don’t have that time nor do they generally have a budget to support such efforts. The good news is that for small business owners – spending millions on branding just isn’t necessary. A small business owner’s number one branding asset is their personality. Stiff, quirky, loud, intelligent, adventurous, straight laced,…

There’s little worth more to a business, regardless of size or industry, which can have the tremendous profitable effect a database of leads can have. Whether you call it your opt-in list, leads, or good old fashioned rolodex, the names on your list are worth money. The strategies for online and offline businesses differ slightly however the value of the database for both is equally important. To create a database of leads, as a business owner of an online business, one simple strategy is to place a form on your website. Research indicates that the right upper corner is the…

“Word of mouth is the most powerful form of communication and marketing out there.” – Mark Hughes Word of mouth marketing is often confused. It all boils down to getting people to talk about your company. It’s the water cooler chatter over that great new Amazon.com product, the after the Super Bowl blogging about which company created the best commercial or worst case scenario…how you spent an hour on hold with ABC company and they still refuse to solve the problem. Word of mouth marketing is so important to the reputation of a company and the success of a brand,…

This one is easy as pie, well I don’t make pie but I do pick it up at the store if I want some… easy. What are you doing to build your brand and increase your business?

I’ve got these good friends of mine who live in Kentucky. It has been a pretty traumatic summer waiting for college season to arrive. You see, they just sent their only child off to his first year of University. They are so very proud of him. He didn’t have any scholarships, well-placed contacts, or remarkable grades – he achieved his first real goal in life thanks in some part to branding. His folks are colleagues of mine in the branding world. When the family gathered around the supper table, and prepared themselves to go through the groups of university brochures…

Here is the current list of plugins that I use here at Small Business Branding. Enjoy 🙂 Adsense Deluxe Articles Audio Player Author Images Auto-Hyperlink URLs Brian’s Threaded Comments comment Relish CSS Compress Dagon Design Sitemap Generator del.icio.us – Bookmark this! del.icio.us Widget Dofollow FeedBurner FeedSmith Full Text Feed Get Author Profile Get custom Field Values Get Recent Comments Google Analytics for Wordpress Google Search Widget Google Sitemaps Google XML Sitemaps Highlight author Comments Improved Include Page Landing Sites List Authors Plus Maintenance Mode markdown Mass Post Manager My Avatars Mighty Search Official Comments Optimal Title Page Link Manager page…

Today I figured was a good day to update you on all that is happening around our home here on the small business landscape. Since taking over the site there’s been alot of production happening behind the scenes. We’ve updated our Media Page to show you exactly where the buzz is coming from and it’s great for our advertisers to know that we are actively promoting the site. We are also looking into some pretty awesome partnerships in the near future to expand our reach even further. First on my list is to call up Entrepreneur.com to discuss some strategies…

You’ve got your cool little business, you’ve had some degree of success and you’ve done it all on your own. The only bar you’re interested in raising is the pub down the street. Who needs all those consultants and brand gurus when you can keep your hard-earned beer money and find the cheapest student or cousin to spin your magic. Well I’m here to make your day and save you tons ‘o dough by giving you ten ways to “DORK YOUR BRAND!” 1) Don’t even think about being consistent with your image. The trick here is to have one logo…