4.
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"Branding Your Small Business On A Budget"
Today's SOHO Help Desk provides 4 steps to creating a
brand for your business.
If you have a valuable tip, promotional idea, question or
answers you would like included in an upcoming issue of
DEMC, all you have to do is submit it by email to -
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To start us off today, we have a DEMC subscriber who would
like your input on developing an email list. Please take a
minute to review this week's question and then send in your
response to us so we can share your insight with all DEMC
subscribers.
=== Help Request ===
Hi,
We have just developed a product, but we have absolutely
no email addresses to send our advert out to. How can we
start to build an email address list ? We are starting
from ground 0.
Many thanks!
Regards
Chris
Send Your Response to - mailto:helpdesk@demc2.com
=== Small Business Brand Development Checklist ===
From: Lee Schissler
"Branding your small business on a budget"
Just because the big boys can have a trendy brand is no
reason you can't create a piece of marketing fame for you
and your small business. Granted, the big companies have
a few more shekels to create and polish their brand and
positioning strategy than the average small business.
A homemade recipe for brand-making on a 'shoestring'
budget!
If you are a small business start up or an established small
business looking for an image boost, this checklist is just
for you. This approach would make the high powered
execs on Madison Avenue cringe because it lacks the
multimillion dollar market research and design studies that
are legendary in creating some of the dominant brands
across America. In spite of Madison Avenue, (been there,
done that, returned the T-Shirt) hėrė is a homemade recipe
for creating your brand and positioning strategy on a
shoestring budget! You just substitute some elbow grease
for the big budget production and voila' you have a brand
and positioning line that sets you apart from your
competitors in your business category.
Un-herd of origins.
Allow me to digress for a moment concerning the origin of
the term branding. Living in Texas, it seems obvious that
the origin of the term branding came at the expense of
cattle that were on the receiving end of hot branding irons.
Brands on the range helped distinguish one rancher's cattle
from another. It was a distinctive, unique design forged on
the end of a long iron rod.
Fast forward to current day, ad saturated America, and we
recognize a brand as a unique product or service identifier
such as the McDonald arches, the Cingular "gumby
thingy", or United Airlines. We refer to these "brands" as
logos, and tend to assign value to them relative to the
product or service they represent. An example is paying a
30% premium for a T-shirt or had with a Nike "swoosh" on
it, or a piece of electronics with a "Sony" plate attached to
the front.
Positioning
Jack Trout and Al Reis articulated this whole positioning
phenomena in their book called, well, Positioning. In a
nutshell, it is the slogan or statement that stakes a claim a
specific benefit that makes your product or service unique.
A "differentiator" between you and your competitors. An
example would be Energizer batteries. Their slogan, "lasts
longer" carves out in the consumer's mind the benefit of
buying their silver batteries, often seen snapped on the
back of a pink bunny, recognized all across the land as the
"Energizer Bunny."
Under the hood of the Energizer Bunny.
To keep the explanation going, and going, and going using
Energizer here's what's under the hood of their branding
and positioning strategy, albeit a gross simplification.
First, their brand is actually a logotype of an italicized
sans serif font that says, "Energizer." Their positioning line is,
"Energizer batteries last longer." Their brand character is
illustrated using a battery operated pink bunny. Some
would argue that the bunny is their brand, but for our
illustration, we are using it as an amplification of the brand
benefit...lasts longer.
What's under the hood of your small business?
So what's the Energizer Bunny within your business?
Since you don't have access to the Madison Avenue
budgets, the following is what I refer to as D&D consumer
research. Translated, "down and dirty" low monėy outlay,
research.
YOUR HOMEMADE BRAND RESEARCH CHECKLIST:
1. Do your homework: Creating your own brand begins
with you taking a critical look at competitor brands in your
business category. Which brands and positioning lines do
you like. Which do you dislike? I know this sounds
extremely simple, but relatively few small business owners
take time to carefully study this aspect of their competition.
Next, take a look at brands OUTSIDE your business
category. What logos do you like? What brands would
look good in your category. For example, if you own a dry
cleaning business, take a look at other unrelated businesses
such as fast food or banking. The idea is to expand your
thinking outside the box and consider brands and design
schemes outside your business category.
I've advised clients to keep a "tear file" where they toss in
ads they see from the local newspaper of ads and logos that
they like. Magazines and direct mail pieces that come
across your desk are also worth inspecting for ideas.
2. Ask your customers: If you already have a business,
ask your customers for their input and help. They will love
it! Everybody is an expert in advertising these days. And,
if you are in the pre-launch phase of your business, ask
prospective customers for their perceptions of your
business category and what types of brands and logos
appeal to them. This can be very interesting information,
and useful to you when developing your rationale for your
chosen branding scheme or logo design.
3. Talk to your suppliers: Walt Disney used to talk about
his role in spreading creativity in the Disney organization,
as that of the bumblebee. He moves between teams of
creative professionals like a bee carrying pollen of ideas
from one group to the other and stirring up even more
creative thoughts and getting better results. Well, your
suppliers have the advantage of hovering around
businesses similar to yours day in and day out. They see
which branding schemes work, and which miss the mark
with their various markets. Of course, your vendors can
provide you valuable information on many other areas of
your business, but let's stay focused on your brand
strategy. You may find some very helpful vendors
willing to show you samples of materials used by other
companies in your category that help them strike a positive
chord with their market and help them sell more product or
service.
4. Unplug to get connected: If you are an online business,
you should unplug from your computer research long
enough to talk to human beings who patronize bricks and
mortar storefronts to see how they respond to successfully
branded businesses outside of cyberspace. Of course the
bricks vs. clicks business models are different, but people
are people when it comes to buying and using your type of
product or service. What kind of brands do they like? For
example, if you plan to open up a coffee shop, hang around
a Starbucks for an education on the power of branding in
the flesh, or rather, by the pot.
If you are branding on a budget, so far you have spent little
more than some gas monėy, a few bucks on a latte, and of
course your time.
###
Lee Schissler is a brand strategy expert with experience
spanning from Madison Avenue to Main Street. He has
consulted on branding and positioning for companies in 15
different industries across his 17 years in marketing. He
holds a MSA degree from the Medill School of Journalism
at Northwestern University and resides in Houston, TX.
===
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