What is Branding? And Should Small Businesses Care?

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• What is Branding? And Should Small Businesses Care?
• Facebook and Small Business: A Match Made in Heaven?
• New Amazon Kindles Will Be More Like Tablets
• How One CEO Learned a Lot of Business Secrets From a Trappist Monk

What is Branding? And Should Small Businesses Care? Posted: 04 Aug 2013 07:01 PM PDT If you spend any time in marketing circles or reading about marketing, you will bump into the word “branding”. Branding is one of those concepts that is a bit vague, at least for the non-marketer small-business owner. So today we’re going to look at “what is branding” from the small business perspective. We’re also going to tackle the question of whether branding should matter to small businesses — or whether it’s something only large corporations should or can afford to care about. What is Branding? There are thousands of definitions of “branding” or just plain old “brand.” One of the best definitions of brand I’ve seen is from the Tronvig Group. To them, a brand is “what sticks in your mind associated with a product, service, or organization — whether or not, at that particular moment, you bought or did not buy.” That seems a good informal way to describe a company’s brand. Under that definition, many things can contribute to a brand. Does a picture pop into your mind about that company, such as its logo or colors? Think about the logo, such as Coca Cola — recognizable the world over, executed in its distinctive  curvy script in white against red. And when you see it, do you imagine the effervescence of a coke, the dark color or how it tastes?  All of those things may run fleetingly through your mind when you want something to drink. Sometimes it’s not the logo but another visual that comes to mind — even packaging. For instance, I couldn’t tell you what the Tiffany logo looks like, but the instant I see the iconic Tiffany blue box, I know which company we’re talking about. Certain attributes immediately come to mind, such as high quality jewelry and luxury home goods — things no one actually needs, but so many desire. Or perhaps it is the company’s approach to customizing its product. Mention the name Starbucks and immediately coffee comes to mind. Now, I don’t even like Starbucks coffee (too strong and burnt tasting to me) but when traveling I will always look for a Starbucks.  I know I can expect a certain level of quality. The coffee will be fresh — not a stale witches brew. But it’s more than coffee I think of — it’s that I can get it the way I want it.  No matter where I am, Starbucks will have hot, steamed low-fat milk to cut the strength. I can ask for a Cafe Misto (the Starbucks name for cafe au lait) made half with steamed milk, and half with brewed coffee. And I will get it — even though it’s not on the menu.  Why? Because Starbucks aims to give you coffee gussied up the way you want it. So when you ask the question “what is branding” — it is something that triggers associations in our minds.  Branding is about creating an identity. It’s what sets one company apart from another. In short, it tells us what we can expect from that company.  It’s about the perception people have of the company. Branding (a verb) is doing those activities and communications, large and small, that create and reinforce a brand, i.e., what a company is known for. Your branding (a noun) is all the elements that make up a brand, whether logo, packaging, colors, reputation for customer service, reputation for customizing customer orders without complaint, speed, self-serve options, low price, high quality — whatever. The Value of Branding According to the Tronvig Group that I mentioned above,  branding is what creates customer loyalty.  They say it is what keeps consumers loyal and buying repeatedly. I would agree with that … but…. I’d go further.  Branding is what helps a prospective buyer call to mind a particular company when it comes time to buy. It’s about awareness. In a world of infinite choices, branding that helps people remember YOUR company is more important than ever.  Today consumers have a seemingly endless choice of retailers, products and services available at our fingertips online, or at the local strip shopping centers or shopping malls. If consumers are shopping for something, what do they do?  Go to Google, where billions of Web pages and yellow page listings are available. Not only are there many choices, but some of the traditional decision factors that separated and defined companies are today transparent and without much difference.  Take, for example, pricing.  Pricing is easier to discover and compare than ever before.  In certain industries there may be very little price difference. When all prices are the same, what makes the buyer choose one over another?  Nuances and qualitative factors may make the difference. For small businesses, what sets apart the business may be factors such as high quality, craftsmanship, personalized customer service, superior knowledge to help customers make the proper product selections, and similar qualitative factors. The challenge for some small businesses is how to get customers to think of them when it’s time to buy.  You don’t want your company to be nonexistent in the customer’s mind. And if they see your brand name in a list of competing vendors (such as in a search engine), you want your brand to be associated with positive factors that make it stand out. Branding is not a replacement for sales or specific marketing campaigns.  But branding assists and reinforces your sales and marketing efforts in important ways. But … We Can’t Afford to Do Branding Actually, you can’t afford not to.  Sure, branding can get incredibly expensive if your idea of branding is a nationwide television and print campaign.  But it doesn’t need to be. Here are 4 low-cost actions you can start on today to help your small business create, build and reinforce brand: 1) Start with clarifying what your brand stands for.  What’s that “one thing” you want customers to think of, when thinking of your company?  Most knowledgeable — that is, your representatives can help the customer choose options in a complicated product environment?   Speed — such as your 10-minute lunch menu, or same-day delivery, or fastest time to create a customized solution?   High quality, especially when all the competition is low quality? If you or your team are confused about that “one thing” that sets your company apart, customers probably will  be, too. If you’re not sure what this is, find out.  Schedule  a strategy session and hash it out with your team.  Do a customer survey to ask existing customers what they value most.  Start asking new customers what made them choose your company or product or service. Try to limit it to one thing or at most two things you want your brand to be known for.  If you end up with a laundry list of 20 things, go back to the drawing board and narrow it down. Customers don’t choose a vendor for 20 reasons — it’s usually one or two reasons that push them over the decision edge. 2) Audit your marketing materials.  This is low hanging fruit. Check over your website, your Facebook page, your brochures, your ads — every piece of marketing you have.  Do you have words in them to clearly convey “that one thing” that you want to be known for? Or are your marketing sending mixed messages, with brochures emphasizing lowest cost, while your website emphasis unparalleled quality?  Maybe you deliver both, but in that case the combination of both should be conveyed, not one or the other. Is your  company name abbreviated in your marketing materials with cryptic initials that customers may not understand?  Just because you refer to your company internally by an abbreviated acronym doesn’t mean customers have any clue what you’re talking about. Look at sales scripts, too.  Are sales reps conveying what your brand is, the way you want them to?  Or are they saying something different?  You may even learn something from them —  they may have discovered through trial and error what customers value most. Make sure everything reinforces what you want customers to think about your business. 3) Demonstrate it with stories.  Stories make your brand “stick.”  It’s not enough just to say over and over that “we specialize in high quality.”  Show it! Write up case studies about how you helped a customer with your high quality solution to solve a problem that no one else could solve. Or get a testimonial about how your product outlasted other products by five years. Write your company story in the About section of your website, and repeat that story in press releases, interviews and other communications. Create a video about your company “story.” 4) Use colors, symbols and other elements to create visual associations. Check your marketing materials for consistency.  As you using an outdated logo on some materials?  Do you even have a logo?  Are colors consistent? Visual elements are important clues that trigger other associations and help customers remember your business. Remember, branding isn’t just for large corporations.  When customers have seemingly endless  choices, branding becomes a crucial competitive edge.  That’s the value of branding for small businesses. Shutterstock: cloud, branding, to-do list The post What is Branding? And Should Small Businesses Care? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Facebook and Small Business: A Match Made in Heaven? Posted: 04 Aug 2013 12:35 PM PDT Facebook, under investors’ fire due to doubts whether it can generate income fast enough, is proving that partnering with small businesses saves the day: Advertising revenue is up by 61 percent to $1.6 billion – fueled by mobile and local ad sales. Looking into the numbers, let’s just say that it’s about time for Facebook to capitalize on the assets. According to the new data released by Facebook, people are well-connected with small businesses on Facebook: There are more than 2 billion connections between local businesses and people. There are more than 645 million views on local business Facebook pages and 13 million comments on them. Seventy percent of monthly active Facebook users in the U.S. are engaged and connected to a local business. Those stats show that the market is there. So, is it safe to say that Facebook and small businesses is a match made in heaven? I think so. Let’s take a look at things from both sides. Facebook and Small Business Facebook Needs Small Businesses Facebook can’t deny the fact that it has to perform better to please investors. Facebook shares that were priced way below the IPO price of $38/share in 2012 have started nearing the IPO price, closing at $36.80 on July 31, 8PM ET. Facebook acknowledges the impact of small business. Releasing a portal called Facebook for Business, the company actively persuades small businesses to use its advertising solutions. Small Businesses Need Facebook As small businesses are looking for cheaper advertising option, they need a place to promote their products and services. Google AdWords is one and Facebook Ads is catching up and gaining more attention – and more ad revenue. Although Facebook ads’ effectiveness is still pretty much questionable in delivering results other than the increase in the typical metric of “likes,” small businesses are still counting on Facebook ads with the hope of getting brand exposure as well as new leads – and hopefully, more sales. Some evidence in the form of case studies – such as this case study on how Miishka, a fashion entrepreneur who built a sustainable business entirely on Facebook and is attracting 1,000 buyers in 6 months – can give an idea or two for small business owners on what Facebook for Business can offer them. But still, when it comes to ad effectiveness, seeing is believing. Takeaway The typical result of Facebook ads is the increase in Likes. However, Facebook Likes alone won’t matter if you can’t translate that into leads or buyers. Looking into the case studies, Facebook ads seem promising. However, you need to be aware that the case studies represent some of the best cases. Achieving similar results is very much possible – but challenging. So, what’s your take? Are Facebook ads effective for your organization or are they benefiting Facebook more than the advertisers? The post Facebook and Small Business: A Match Made in Heaven? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

New Amazon Kindles Will Be More Like Tablets Posted: 04 Aug 2013 09:00 AM PDT There just seem to be more decisions everyday when it comes to choosing that next mobile business device. Up until now, the e-reader and the tablet have not been synonymous. But for entrepreneurs between the office and that next meeting or traveling, both have been helpful to stay productive. Now there’s buzz in tech circles that by this fall a couple of new devices could completely blur those lines. New Kindle Fire HDs being reported by several sources could be more connective with more processing speed and more memory like a tablet. But they could feature the lower price tag that has made e-readers so popular. A Look At the New Kindles New photos posted by TheVerge.com show familiar looking Kindle Fire HD devices in 7-inch and 8.9 inch formats. Specs for the new Kindle Fire HD devices reported by BGR include: High resolution screens (1,920 x 1,200-pixel display for the 7-inch, 2,560 x 1,600-pixel for the 8.9 inch) Higher processing speed than the Nexus 7 Cellular connectivity in addition to the WiFi available in earlier Kindle Fire devices (meaning the new devices can use cellular service independent of a local wireless connection or hotspot) Availability of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of internal storage (as opposed to simply having storage space on Amazon’s cloud service) Reports aren’t clear about the probable price of these new devices. But with the iPad priced at $499, the new Nexus 7 starting at $229 and the current Kindle Fire at $199, the new Kindles could be very competitive, industry experts predict. Image: Amazon, Existing Kindle Fire The post New Amazon Kindles Will Be More Like Tablets appeared first on Small Business Trends.

How One CEO Learned a Lot of Business Secrets From a Trappist Monk Posted: 04 Aug 2013 06:00 AM PDT We find inspiration for our businesses and our lives in odd places sometimes, don’t we? For August Turak, he surprisingly uncovered strategies and techniques he could apply to the business world in Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery in the heart of South Carolina. He compiled his inspirations into Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks: One CEO’s Quest for Meaning and Authenticity. From MTV to Mushrooms Turak (@AugustTurak), has worked for large corporations including MTV, as well as founded and sold two highly successful software businesses, Raleigh Group International (RGI) and Elsinore Technologies. He has been featured in publications like Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, the New York Times, and Business Week and writes about leadership on Forbes.com. But despite being the protégé of the man who founded the IBM Executive School, it’s his 17 years working with the Trappist monks of Mepkin Abbey that has had a profound impact on who he is as an entrepreneur. Service and Selflessness Turak’s focus, both in his book and on his website, is service and selflessness at work. You can see how he’d observed a lot of that spending so much time at a monastery. But how can business owners apply these concepts to their own work? In the book, Turak talks about the “consciously transformational organization,” which, he says, has three things in common: A high, overarching mission worthy of being selflessly served. Personal transformation as part of the mission. A methodology for bringing transformation about. He then dives into each of these points in subsequent chapters. While the mission of the monastery is to serve God, sometimes the mission of a company ends up being fluff. Not, says Turak, because the mission is too lofty or abstract, but because the people in charge of drafting missions tend to lack the commitment and imagination to make them alive. Defining mission and infusing it into decision making is not the province of a yearly management retreat…it is a daily imperative that is the single most important priority every organization must have. Your Commitment to Excellence Turak ends the book by talking about how the monks are committed to their lifestyle, and stresses the importance of entrepreneurs and businesspeople acting the same in their worlds. He says that commitment is dynamic, and should be ongoing: Commitment may begin with a single decision, but there is all the difference in the world between making a commitment and becoming committed. What I Liked Best Turak makes it clear that aspiring to selflessness and service isn’t relegated to the highly religious. Companies who genuinely put their customers’ needs before their own can use this model to successfully grow. He provides many examples of companies doing just that, from the Marines to local credit unions. The very fact that this book focuses where no other book does for inspiration (a monastery) spins the conventional business book on its head. I, for one, enjoyed the refreshing breeze that wafted up from Mepkin Abbey, which subsists by selling oyster mushrooms, garden compost and eggs to pay the bills. Who Should Read This Book You should read this – especially if you’re tired of business books that sound like every other book you’ve read. It will inspire entrepreneurs to think differently about how they model their businesses, and will teach them to look where others aren’t looking, the way Turak did. The post How One CEO Learned a Lot of Business Secrets From a Trappist Monk appeared first on Small Business Trends.

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