Quick Tip #1: A Great Way to Loose Money
Well, it’s never great to loose money, but many businesses loose money without knowing they lost it. It’s actually pretty easy to loose money just by not watching it.
If you market your business and don’t track how effective your tactics are then chances are you are wasting money on ineffective tactics. Let’s say you print a brochure, you distribute postcards, you pay for a directory listing and you don’t track how your customers found out about your business or what motivated them to buy from you. How do you know if you got even one person from your brochure unless you ask. What if most of your business comes from your postcards, shouldn’t you defer money from a broken tactic to print more postcards, maybe. You have to think about branding and name recognition too, buth the point is, if you don’t watch your money you will loose it. If you don’t track your marketing efforts you will probably not be as effective as you can be with your marketing money.
Quick Tip #1:
Create a simple form that allows you to survey your customers about how they heard about your business. If you have a website, add the survey to your sales and contact forms.
The knowledge of many is much stronger than the knowledge of one. Share your business problems with us to get the collective brain power of UMN invested in a solution for you.
Charles Bryant
URBANMarketingNetwork.com
Stop Selling and Let Your Brand Sell Itself
This is for my small business owners who are out there doing it on their own or with a few partners or employees. If you are having a hard time getting new customers with your traditional marketing efforts, stop focusing on mass marketing. If you have poured time and money into print, television, radio, or even the Internet creating, producing and distributing marketing material and advertisements, but they aren’t working for you, change your focus. If you are disheartened or confused by all the new internet strategies, no matter how much I may preach or recommend them, refocus your strategy.
› Continue reading
Is Your Personal Style Getting In the Way of Your Message?
This fun, fresh and clean new look for Coca-Cola was designed by Turner Duckworth and won a first ever Design Grand Prix award at Cannes Lions. You may think that there isn’t much difference in the product design, but a professional product designer would say the difference is huge. You may say it doesn’t matter because Coke is already well branded and known world wide. A professional brand manager would say that they still have to protect their brand by doing those things that will keep the brand at the top.
Why did Coca Cola, after years of adding to their product design and branding Coca-Cola with cute polar bears, go back to a simple design? Because the market is crowded with flash and bang and people are tired of being yelled at. Coca-Cola trusted Turner Duckworth to simplify the brand and bring Coke back to the essence of its brand. Simple, if it doesn’t add anything to the brand, take it away.
To be unique, try being quiet, softer, less flashy, turn off some of the noise. Say what you mean, get to the point, be simple. Let your brand and your message take center stage and speak in a unique tone to the market. Offer what your audience is looking for. Stop wasting their time with fluff and get to the meat they are looking for. Be honest, be real, be strategic and present your brand in a manner that few companies truly understand and you will find that your message will be better received. Realize that your brand goes beyond how it looks and you will find that you are getting more and more customers (read Not So Secret Key to Branding Your Company). › Continue reading
Simple Plan for Online Success
Bringing your company or organization online is simple, affordable, and smart. You don’t have to know anything about computers or technology; you just have to use the right company to help build
your online organization. Some of the benefits of being online:
- The cost, in comparison to offline marketing and operating costs is very small.
- You can save on printing by offering your print materials online for download.
- You can measure the effectiveness of your online marketing in real time, so you will know how your dollars are being spent.
- You don’t have to pay your Web site a salary with commissions and benefits, it just works 24/7.
- The internet gives you access to customers outside of your local community.
To grow your Web site you have to create a plan and remember that your online operations isn’t much different than your offline operations. Here are some things to think about for your online organization:
- Define the Purpose and Goals of Your Web site
- Define the Structure of Your Web site
- Get a Name for Your Web site
- Get a Home for Your Web site
- Build an Attractive User-friendly Web site
- Promote Your Web site
Not So Secret Key to Branding Your Company
Wikipedia states that a brand is a collection of symbols, experiences and associations connected with a product, a service, a person or any other artifact or entity. Your brand is expressed as a promise to deliver unique value. Your brand defines the difference between you and your competition. There are many books, articles and blogs dedicated to branding, but I think most of us, as business owners, forget one important thing about our brand. It is a promise to DELIVER.
How do you deliver unique value? What experiences and associations do your customers connect with your business? Are you true to what you want your brand to be? If you say you are the best at something, do you really deliver the best? If you provide the cheapest price, best quality, exclusive service…will the market call your company a liar? You can’t please everyone. From time to time, you will face challenges that will cause you to deliver contrary to your brand promise, but in the end, do you deliver consistently on your brand promise?
Throw Away Your Business Plan and Plan Your Business
Most days I spend a great deal of my time helping small businesses succeed. One thing in common with many of these businesses, they don’t know where they are going. They know they want to make money, grow into a big company selling their product or services. The problem is, a great percentage of them have no idea how they are going to realize the great vision they have for their companies. What they need is a plan.
Before you say, “not another business planning article,” I am not talking about a traditional business plan. I appreciate traditional business plans, but many times they are geared more towards raising capital from banks and investors than guiding your business to success. What I am talking about is simple, to the point, and built to drive results.
Subscribe
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Add to My Yahoo
Subscribe in NewsGator
Subscribe with Bloglines
Add to Netvibes
Add to Google
Share
Categories
Archive
Links
