Use Big Business Branding for your Small Business

by Steve Jay SEO Consultant

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a "name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.”

But, I hear you saying, isn’t this just for major Corporations that have a Marketing department, and the time to take time considering what their Brand is? No, it’s for every business of any size, and how they communicate with their own audience. The earlier in your businesses’ life that you can uniquely help someone, the sooner you will be looking at business spread and growth. Any business can dominate their community, but it takes some work from someone that completely understands their business to do it. In a small business, that person is probably you.

Start the process into ‘finding your brand’, by asking yourself the following questions:

Who you are?

Who is your community?

How do you help solving your communities’ problem?

How are you different from others?

Your Community.

Knowing your target Community is the most vital part of your branding process, if we ignore this we will never reach our target audience. Here are the questions you need to answer about your prospects:

Where are they?

How will you reach each other: Phone, website, social, mobile, or email?

What is the problem what you can solve for them?

Content

Content is very important, as Content is going to talk for you every day. Content should be created/marketed as it…

Builds awareness of your Service.

Builds trust in you as a person and your company.

Creates fans of what you do. Fans come back over and over again, and they evangelize for you with other prospects. In essence, they become an unpaid part of your sales and marketing force. Word-of-Mouth marketing is the most important type of Advertising there is, so how do you deliver a message to your fans that they will repeat to others.

Most important of all, your marketing effort/strategy runs on content. Plan five or six steps ahead, and ensure that the content you deliver consistently telegraphs your core message.

Marketing Channels

What channels do your prospects use, and how can you get to them?

What is the use of creating a incredible content and not have it seen? By finding out if it’s local print, TV and Radio, online, or ‘billboards’ in public signage, how do they find you? Spend your budget getting to your prospects in the areas they will see you easiest.

Even if it’s by referral, listen to what people are saying and where they are saying it. You will have to streamline your content to be broadcast over the avenues that consistently bring you new people. Above all, remember that it not just “you are there and you are done with it”; you have to live there, you have to contribute, monitor, respond, and build trust. You have to make sure are along with them always.

Online this will mean the right web content, optimized for the right Search Engines, updated often, and always tailored to you audience. You can add Blog posts, Video and audio, updates, breaking news, pictures, and honest company news. Social media is great for this – get to the people that will require you in the future, interest them, and keep in touch.

Offline, this means understanding your prospect community and being a part of it: Charity events, seminars, and workshops. Sponsor other events, get to your audience where they live and work. Keep in mind that you have to solve the problem or you are just empty vessel making noise.

Measurement

How do you know if your brand/branding is working? You need to monitor and measure your results. This isn’t so much setting goals, as understanding what analytics you are using, and growing them. If something isn’t working, find out why and move to others, or change your message. Look at how this Vancouver crater and packer has acheived this.

Do your live events attract people? Has your website increased its traffic size? Do your social platforms show an increase in followers? Does your Newsletter or E-mail marketing show a larger and larger audience, or response rate?

So originate some rules for yourself to constantly monitor your Branding efforts: Look at your target audience. Is it right? Does your message match it? Have you found your Ideal Customer? Does your content excite these people? Does it change, and is it updated often enough? Does it match your marketing channels, and is it being received?

It can be the greatest Ad Copy ever, but if it doesn’t match the avenue you are using, it is useless. Look at the market leaders in your industry, and parse what they are saying, and where.

Finally, test out different messages on different platforms in different ways at different times of the year, to find out which ones work best, to whom, at what time, and through which avenue. It’s only when you find out the best possible match between Prospect Pool, message and avenue that you will truly discover the best message – and that is your brand.

Your Facebook page’s organic reach is about to plummet — even more so than it has in the past six months, down to a lowly 1-2%, actually. That means if you have 1,000 Facebook likes on your page, only about 10-20 of those fans will even see your posts! While organic reach has long been declining, it has significantly declined since the fall of 2013.

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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